The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. Hamlin Emory (continued)

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Dr. Hamlin Emory continues his in-studio discussion of approaching physical health and mental wellness with ideas found in his book, "Hard to Swallow."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy pm investments.com. The Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, I'm talking to my friend, Dr. Hamlin Emery, E-M-O-R-Y, who has a bookout called Hard to Swallow from Superstition to Psychiatry. You can also find him at his website, Dr. Emery.com. So Dr. Emery, you're talking about stuff that for most people, this is very hard to process. But the bottom line for the layman is that you're able via reading brainwaves after you do all this other, you know, medical, standard medical workups on people, but that you can somehow get an insight into their problem that many other doctors simply would throw their

hands up at some point. I want to emphasize, Eric, this is not just a matter of meeting a person, taking a blood pressure and pulse, and then conjecturing about a person. I require people to monitor their pulse and blood pressure over a period of a week or two. I require that they allow me to do a reasonably detailed physical exam. The vital signs, pulse and blood pressure, their physical form, whether they're overweight, underweight, or athletic, and reasonably normal range for their height. All of these factors are essential.

before I try to analyze how I can make them harmonious or homeostatic. Okay, so when you say homeostatic, that's one of those words you use that some people will get it and some people won't. What you're saying is you have an ideal. In other words, you say that so-and-so has some abnormalities, they have some problems or whatever, and you believe that it's almost like tinkering with an equalizer on a stereo, right? It's brain body balance. It's brain body balance. So you move this a little bit here, you move this a little bit here,

and suddenly things even out in a way that they hadn't been evened out. And that's what you did with me. But you've done this in some dramatic cases. I mean, you've had people come to you that are paralyzed, that are experiencing seizures, and you were able using these diagnostic tools to solve their problems, which is utterly life-changing for some people. I understand. Yeah, well, I just do it innately.

I think it's likely that I simply was imbued with a sense of empathy by my parents. I credit my parents and my background. in the Episcopal Church. And I think it just simply is my natural calling. So I can't explain it any other way. Right. But I mean, I wish more doctors felt that way. I think a lot of doctors are just,

I don't know if they're shuffling papers or they're just fatigued or they can't be bothered to care. But you do care and you want to get to the bottom of it. But what's interesting is you do get to the bottom of it. And because you have seen success, of course, it prods you to dig deeper, to work with people. Because you believe things are solvable. You don't feel what it's just a waste of time, and I've got to send them off. Yes.

For me, this has been a – it's been highly rewarding, but it's also interesting because it's intellectual. I'm dealing with an arrest. of numbers that is over, it's a matrix of over a thousand numbers that are measured with each person's quantitative EEG data. And I had to learn to, I give you an example, to tell a monae from a manet from a Pizarro. You know, when you're looking at art, you know, from the 18th and 19th centuries, you can see different patterns by different artists. You can see. Weren't those 19th and 20th century artists that you just referred to?

Yeah, that's right. I'm here for you to, for the audience, just to make sure that, you know, we're not going to let anybody get away with that stuff. Mene, Monet, and Pizarro. So what do you mean by that? I think you have to even put that in layman's term. Well, there's a matrix of over a thousand numbers that... When you're reading an EEG... When I'm reading the readout, the printout. Right. And there are ratios, mathematical ratios,

that my partner and I constructed over time because there is an age-average asymptomatic database in persons from the ages of six, to AET. And that database was generated by a group of brilliant scientists at NYU. Okay, so that's, so this is the key. You, you look at the brains and the brain waves of people who are healthy, who are asymptomatic. Correct. And then when you have a patient come in and you see some anomaly, you say, aha, this is off. This may be a key to their symptoms. to their problems, to their seizures, to whatever it is that they're experiencing. So you have this database.

Yes. But very few people do what you do. Now, why is that? I can't speak for other people. I think that my earlier experience as a general medical doctor made me comfortable with examining people. and I can remember from the beginning of my psychiatric practice, there were two men who had persistently fast pulse rate. They were depressed, but what I realized was the pulse rate was the thing that needed to be corrected,

and perhaps if I did it, their so-called depression would reduce or resolve. And in fact, that's what happened. Right, but what you're talking about is because you have so much experience that you kind of have an instinct. And this is what good, you know, diagnosticians do. They bring a body of experience so that when they look at something, they think, I think it may be this or it may be this. And that's, but also the title of your book, to swallow from superstition to psychiatry, I think what you were just implying is that people in the

world of psychiatry, because they don't have a background as general medical practitioners, that they almost, they shy away from a lot of this kind of, what did you call it? I call it comprehensive medical approach. And they sort of, I mean, you, in your book, you, you, you deride it as superstition versus actual medicine. In other words, what you're saying is you bring the tools of a doctor to bear on things that have to do with the brain, whereas psychiatrists oftentimes lean a little bit too much on just dealing with the brain, and it becomes like superstition. they're sort of guessing and they're dealing with things that are not quantifiable. You're dealing with actual numbers.

Well, yes. I really had a sense of looking for the best in people. I've always had that as foremost in my mind. And so I was clearly concerned about improving people's overall physical health. Remember, I had been a general medical doctor in the military for a couple of years. So I was of the opinion that persons were really living with unknown, unrecognized, and untreated medical variations. And I wanted to learn what those were and see if I could improve their health. In my book, I do explain one young man who was a...

I had a master's degree. Actually, let's forgive me. We're going to go to a break. I will let you finish that sentence and all of these thoughts when we come back. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal.

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today and register for free. That's inspireinsight.com. Go there. Folks talking to Dr. Hamlin. Emery, the book is hard to swallow from superstitionist psychiatry. You were just telling us about some patient. It was a, in my early months as a psychiatric resident, I met a young man who had a master's degree in math. And his wife described him. experiencing intermittent psychotic episodes in which he would become enraged

and he was married and even had a child and had been treated in the clinic at UCLA as a paranoid schizophrenic but it was strange and I thought that a person with schizophrenia would be able to marry and have a child and the relationship

with his wife was reasonable, except when he had these episodic outbursts. And it sounded as if he might have some kind of epilepsy. So I referred him to a neurologist on the faculty. And sure enough, The EEG was abnormal and showed figures and forms that are typical of temporal lobe epilepsy. So I chose a, the prevalent medicine of that day was Dylanton. And put him on a small, or low dose of Dylenton. And those episodes resolved. And his wife was overjoyed. He was subsequently promoted to move to New York with the home office of his firm.

And I had received from him on the anniversary of his regaining consciousness and stability. I received a thank you note for about a decade. Well, that's just one example. Your book Hard to Swallow from Superstitionist psychiatry, you have a number of these examples. Now, I want to be clear, too, there was another piece to, so you do the EEG, you do all of this diagnostic testing, the heart rate, the vitals, you do all that stuff. But when we had our initial meeting, you asked me to do a number of things which were very strange to me, to count, numbers backwards to repeat things? What is that?

What is that tool that you use? I'm looking for whether someone has any inefficiency in the temporal lobes or the prided or the parietal lobes because I, if I can find some inefficiency, then I know where to place my emphasis it's just essential. Excellence resides in the details. I would aim, I always aim my treatment to improve someone's intellectuality or cognition. I think this way.

Cognition is more important than emotion in my work. If I'm improving someone's cognition, then the part of the brain that subtends the emotionality will improve as well. I think I know what you mean, but I'm not sure. No, actually, I think I do. But you have a website, Dr. Emery.com, in case people want to find you. You're in, what is it, Century Park in?

Century City. Century City in L.A. That's your office there. I've only been there once. And isn't it a documentary? Can people find that? Where would they look that up? It's on my website.

Oh, it is? Okay. If they just go to Dr. Emery.com, they can find out more about this. Well, what you're describing, I mean, I think one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because this worked for me, and because I've known you over the years, I'm surprised that more people are, you, aren't doing this? Well, I think that there are certain faculty members at

NYU who are carrying on this work. Oh, so here in New York there are. Yes. And how would one find them? I mean, if somebody says I can get to us. Someone would need to call the Department of Psychiatry

at NYU. Right. And ask about who is doing this approach in the department of psychiatry? Well, the problem, I think, is that when you talk about psychiatry, because of Freud, people don't think of psychiatry the way they would have before Freud. In other words, psychiatry is you're a brain doctor,

and the brain is not some inchoate concept. It's an organ in the head. That's right. And so that's what you deal with it. You deal with the brain and brain chemistry as a doctor, not as a witch doctor. Right. It isn't just a big blob of goo. It is a matrix of tracks.

And we have excellent knowledge of the internal anatomy of the human brain. And you can... you can strategize and select both naturopathic compounds and regular prescriptive medicines to influence, let's say, the function in the temporal lobes or the occipital lobes, temporal lobes are the speech and language regions, and the acetylopes in the back of the head are the visual cortices. So a doctor can learn how to select agents that will improve the visual area,

the visual area, or the speech and language area or both. You learn that through experience. But what kind of a, you know, when you say psychiatry, if somebody goes to NYU's psychiatry, I mean, you're describing things that go beyond psychiatry. I mean, you know, when you talk about, so I think that's part of the problem, right? In other words, is that we have these categories and a lot of people's problems are beyond simple categories. That's true. I've often thought that this work ought to be assumed by a subset of family doctors, for example. But whether you're a neurologist or a neuropsychiatrist, which I think is what I do,

or a family doctor who wants to specialize in this area, it is possible. within two or three years to learn what one needs to do, to basically be able to do the technology and look at people comprehensively, which is what I think I'm doing. Because at times I treat someone who has high blood pressure, let's say. But the high blood pressure may be due to a, variance in their brain function, which can be actually then normalized by making the brain better,

the blood pressure can normalize. So it sounds to me like the problem is that you can help almost everyone. In other words, this is not hyper-specific. This is really all kinds of people with all kinds of problems could find that by going to you, because I don't know other doctors who do this, but that you would say, well, I see this, I see this, I would try this, I would try this. But, I mean, you know, a lot of people have high blood pressure,

but they wouldn't think there's any way to deal with it other than going the standard route. Well, I know that the University of Texas and UCLA have announced a joint study in quantitative EEG. That was actually about a year ago. they announced that. So I think there are some medical schools and residencies, Harvard included, and Stanford as well, that are moving toward what you and I are discussing today that I call neurophysiologic medicine.

there there's uh when we come back i want to read uh i think it's uh it goes along with your book you talk about how freud introduced his theory about human nature that has continued to hinder medical and psychiatric progress for over a century because of psychoanalysis he ignored differences in human physiology and presumed that all problematic symptoms of unusual behavior or unusual behaviors were rooted in perverted thoughts he was mistaken in that, and it has led to a century of problems. We'll be right back with a man who's solving some of those problems, Dr. Hamlin Emery. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have

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They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metal safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. I continue my conversation with Dr. Hamlin Emery. And Dr. Emery, I want to read something from your book. The book is hard to swallow from superstitionist psychiatry. Lots of fascinating stories in here. The quote is, a healthy brain automatically balances itself and the body 24-7. Yet inherited differences in brain function can impair these interactions and cause persistent distress. The method that you use uses measurable biological parameters and thus is a fact-driven

way to improve brain function that has caused physical illness, learning problems, substance dependence, or mental disorder. Each person's treatment is personalized and selected to achieve brain-body balance. Part of the problem is that what you do can help so many different kinds of problems. I mean, here, in this quote alone, it says physical illness, learning problems, substance dependence, or a mental disorder. In other words, because our brains are at the root of everything, there are so many problems that can stem from these abnormalities. From these variances. From these variances, that's a more positive way of putting it.

But this is concrete stuff. This is not, you're not, it's not a guessing game. It's not, you're not a witch doctor. This is, you're looking at numbers. You have this huge database of asymptomatic brain function. That you look at it and you say, this is what's normal. Somebody comes in, they've got certain problems, whatever. they are, and you look at everything, and then you say, well, these numbers are off. This may be

a clue to your symptoms. You also talk about how Freud, in other words, how we got to this problem, where psychiatry has become, in many ways, almost a kind of superstition, Freud separated the mind from the body, and the widespread adoption of Freudian psychoanalysis, and other psychological constructs about human nature, I presume that brain function is the same across human populations. In other words, if that were the case, then you've got nowhere to go except where Freud goes. But what you're saying is they have ignored the most basic things,

that whatever problems you have, first they should look at what is your EEG, what are your symptoms, and once they've looked at that as medical doctors, that should be the first thing that they look at as a clue to your problem. And most people have learned not to do that. Yes. The medical profession has, in fact, ignored common differences in functional brain activity that exist across populations.

And ultimately, I think that what I do should be a sub-substableness. specialty in what's called family medicine or general medicine. In other words, a lot more people need to know how to do this. Yes. Now, you teach this. If people want to learn how to do this, if a doctor wants to learn what you do, you would teach them. Sure.

I wish there were more of you, but there's just you. It's kind of amazing to me. Well, you know, as a result of our conversation, I'm going to contact a person whom I know at NYU and find details about where they are in terms of their research. I do know that they are using the technology that I use. Well, again, the reason I wanted to have you on the program, this is the frustration.

You helped me significantly. And so then I think to myself, what about all these other jugheads out there that I went to over 20 years who did not help me? They don't seem to have a clue about what you do. Almost no one has a clue about what you do. And I think to myself, this is tragic because there are lots of people struggling with all kinds of problems. And they're not even aware that they can get the kind of help that you offer. And one of the reasons I want to have you on is to help draw awareness to what it is that you do.

Now, do you call this, did you trademark this term, brain first medical approach? Is that a trademark? I don't think. It says brain first, that's brain one ST, brain first medical approach. I don't think I've trademarked it. Well, it's got a TM next to it, so somebody trademarked it. But the book is titled Hard to Swallow from Superstitious Psychiatry. Now, this is a really dumb question.

I should have asked you an hour ago. why is the book titled Hard to Swallow? Well, Hard to Swallow is, I think it relates to the resistance to what you do. Yes. Yeah. Well, this is, look, we've experienced this, you experienced this everywhere in life. There are these paradigms. People get stuck in these paradigms, and they're resistant to anything that is different than that.

paradigm to shift a paradigm. I talk about this in my own book, which you're reading, is atheism dead. You have people that are so stuck in a materialist paradigm that they can't even bear to consider whether they are mistaken. Even to do that, they feel I will get professionally ostracized. So I can't even do that. I talk about how Einstein fell into that trap. I mean, when his calculations showed that the universe is expanded. he, the great Einstein thought, I certainly can't go public with that. I will be a laughing stock.

Even he was insecure about his stature as a scientist. So he kind of buried it in the cosmological constant, the fudge factor. And then years later, when others realized, no, no, no, the universe is expanding. He thought, what have I done? He called it the greatest blunder of my life. And I think that people get, even good people,

get stuck in paradigms. You're a paradigm buster. And when we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Dr. Hamlin. Emery, you can find him at Dr.emory.com. Hey there, folks. Eric Metaxis here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. But he didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow. Now, Mike has done it again by introducing his My Slippers.

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and impact gel to help prevent fatigue, made with quality, leather, suede. Call 1-800-978-3057. Use the promo code Eric or go to MyPillow.com. Click on the radio listeners square and use promo code Eric. offer will not last long, so order now with promo code Eric at MyPillow.com or call 800-978-3057. 800-98-3057. Folks, welcome back talking to Dr. Hamlin Emery. You can find him at Dr. Emery.

It's DR.D-R-E-M-O-R-Y.com. Let's get specific. There are many stories in your book. So I hope people will get the book, hard to swallow from superstition of psychiatry. But there's a story in your book, Chapter 13, titled, Your too emotional. Every one of these stories is a classic case. Somebody comes in with a problem.

It's been a chronic problem. You are able to see something that no one else saw. And in fact, you're correct and you solved the problem. What's the case? This is a woman named Victoria. She, something like 20 years ago,

came into your office. Having episodic seizures. And she was treated in a standard way with a series of anti-seizure medications. The problem with most of the anti-seizure medications is it decreases amplitude in the human EEG and lowers the frequencies of the alertness domain. The alertness... The alertness...

But we're going to let it go. It makes a person less alert. Okay. So the downside. So somebody comes in and says, I have periodic seizures, and the doctor throws some pills at you and says, here, take these anti-seizure pills. And what you're saying is these anti-seizure pills have significant downside, which the doctor, the doctor is, everything is a nail because the doctor is a hammer.

And he says, this is the problem, this will fix the problem without regard to the fact that this will cause other problems. Well, the usual and customary anti-seizure or anti-epileptic medications reduce voltages and speed in the alertness frequencies. For a person who has seizures but needs to have their voltages in their alertness frequencies increased, the usual seizure medications make that type of person worse. and so they have which is called side effects. They become sleepy, they become less cognitively clear, and it can become highly dysphoric. They can gain weight because the metabolism is slowed.

So you're pretty much talking about the United States of America. We have hundreds of millions of people on all kinds of medications with all kinds of downsides without doctors, willing to look into whether these are optimal medications for them? True. That's the problem. I think the medical delivery system would markedly improve the general health of the public if there were EEGs done before treatment,

and that, how we, I would have. However, it would take a paradigm shift, or it would require a paradigm shift. So what was it when you examined this patient in Chapter 13 of your book, Victoria and others, what did you change and what were the results? She had a low voltage EG, and the alertness frequencies were not optimal, And so what I did was to prescribe a new-adrenaline-up regulating compound. Like what?

New adrenaline. And what are some of those compounds? Oh, maclobamide. Okay, never mind. Stratera. But I guess the point is that because you did the EEG, you saw these things. Most doctors who would never even look at an EEG, with these problems. They say you've got a seizure issue. I'm not going to look at the EG. I'm just going to give you this medicine.

Ritalin and Adderall and Exodrine are in that classification. Okay. So these, this approach, you know, again, is not taught in enough medical schools. And I think, however, that may change with, the University of Texas and UCLA. And Harvard has been doing this work, but I don't know how far they have advanced. And I'm still not clear. What do you call this work?

In other words, what's the catch-all term? Learning the pattern recognition, or even better, developing a computer program and artificial intelligence, that would inform physicians who don't know how to do the technology what would improve each patient's brain function. Right. I mean, it seems to me that you already have enough data,

you have enough EEGs, you have enough information that you should be able to feed this into computer and come up with an AI system that can spit this out so that people don't need to spend decades learning this. That's true. But you don't know if anybody's working on that. I don't. I don't.

Someone could come into my office and within a period of X number of months, probably develop a database that would take the work of, you know, several people for maybe six to eight months. But, I mean, I hate to be hyperbolic, but it just seems to me that, this could help so many people. This is why I'm so frustrated, because I know that you've helped me. I know the stories in your book are true. And it's all perfectly logical.

In other words, it's not like people have to suspend their disbelief. This is perfectly logical stuff. This is actual science. Yes. And it has worked for many people. The stories are in the book. But as we were saying before, people are resistant to move out of their their paradigms for many reasons.

Well, one paradigm does not roll over for another, oftentimes. Well, it's funny too, though, because in a funny way, you're not even asking people to shift paradigms that dramatically. I mean, this is your augment, you can augment their pre-existing paradigms, but they have to care. Well, I hope that some people will read the book because this is, I'd like to think that this would be the beginning of a revolution in the right direction. We have a final segment.

The book, folks, Hard to Swallow from Superstitionist Psychiatry by Dr. Hamlin Emory, E-M-O-R-Y. And you can find him at Dr. Emory.com. It's DR-E-M-O-R-Y.com. We'll be right back. Folks, final segment with my friend, Dr. Hamlin Emory. So, Dr. Emory, you said to me, you're willing to teach people how to do this. I just, you know, I wish I were a young person involved in medicine.

I would leap at that because I just, the success that you have seen, you know, a lot of times the problem is communication. You can have success or whatever, but if no one knows about it, then the word doesn't get out and other people don't. So that's one of the reasons I want to have you on here because I thought everybody has a brain. Everyone has brain waves. This is not, you know, some rare, strange thing. No, it's not esoteric, right.

Almost anybody who has any kind of problems could potentially be helped by this, could be helped by this. And that's why I'm such an advocate of it. And I'm kind of just amazed that not more people know how to do it. Well, I have been talking to one of the persons on the faculty at UCLA, and I've known her for, for a couple of decades. And I'm going to initiate a conversation with the department head and his assistant by having her introduce me.

Because I think I only have maybe four or five additional years of work in my body. I think I'm good for another four to five years. And I want to requie this to some organization whether it's UCLA or USC. It has to be some you know, a large institution in Los Angeles because that's where I live.

I'm going to do that. And we'll see if there are interested young people on the faculty at either of those institutions. Well, I mean, if anybody reads the book, Hard to Swallow from Superstitioned Psychiatry, they can't help but be compelled by the stories, that these are case after case of strange situations and what you bring to bear on it, you solve these problems. And how do you not get happy about that?

I mean, it's what's kept you going, is that it works. That's true. That's true. I can think, for example, of a number of outliers, people whose treatment would violate the psychiatric model, people who have normalized with Ritalin or one of the so-called stimulating medicines, which increase voltage in the alertness frequencies, those people suffer terribly because their treatments are sometimes 180 degrees in the wrong direction due to the lack of a physiologic marker, such as EEG,

so that a psychiatrist can select medication for each individual rather than selecting medication by linking the treatment to symptoms and behaviors. Symptoms and behaviors are not valid antecedents

for prescribing medication for the human brain. I think we'll leave it there. I want to say publicly thank you to Richard and Pam Scurry for introducing me to Dr. Hamlin. Emery, who genuinely changed my life. I thank God for you, Dr. Emery. Thanks also for your time, for your willingness to talk about this.

Thanks. Thank you. It's a pleasure.