The Joe Rogan Experience - #700 - Dr. Mark Gordon & Andrew Marr

Episode Date: September 25, 2015

Dr. Mark Gordon is the Medical Director of Education at Access Medical Laboratory and is recognized as a top leader world wide in Interventional Endocrinology (Anti Aging Medicine). Andrew Marr is a former Green Beret and founder of the Warrior Angels Foundation. http://www.warriorangelsfoundation.org/

And boom, we're live. Before you take any of Dr. Gordon's advice, I just want you to know, folks, he's scared of shrimp, shellfish, pork, he's never had wild game, and he refuses to eat outside of a very narrow dietary discipline. He's got like a very, what is it? Halal? Is that? Halal. You really do that? You really eat halal? I don't eat pork. You don't eat pork? No pork. That's, but you know about bacon, right? When was the last time you've had it?

I had turkey bacon today. Yeah, I had turkey bacon. Absolutely. That's just pathetic. Turkey sausage, turkey bacon. Sex with two condoms on. This is totally unnecessary. Well, some of us don't even use that.

But how could you eat turkey bacon and not eat the real bacon bacon? I used to eat it. But after getting sick. No one got sick ever in the history of the world from bacon. Do you eat bread? Yes. You have no problems with gluten? Well, I don't have a problem with gluten.

Okay, there's a lot of people who do have a problem with gluten. Well, I have a problem with pig. You don't have any problems with pig. How dare you? My stool doesn't look as good as it does when I'm not on it. What are you doing? Going over your stool with a fine-tooth comb? You better believe it.

You should look at your stool every morning. We're here with Dr. Mark Gordon, my good friend, and his friend Andrew Marr. What is your position in the Warrior Angels Foundation? I founded it, Joe. So founder and former Green Beret. And tell us all about what it's about and what the mission is. Yeah, absolutely. Our mission is to get no cost traumatic brain injury treatment to veterans who need it. So it's an alternative means to get guys treatment outside of the medical model, which is

predicated on medication and psychotherapy, which does not improve quality of life. Is that changing at all because of, you know, all the work that Dr. Gordon has been doing? I've heard outside of you even mention of your name, people bringing up your therapies and the things that you've been promoting for several years. Is that changing in the community at all? We're working to change it actively. So we're going to have a meeting next month with some top people in the active duty side of the House. We're also meeting with our – and works of getting with the Veterans Administration and working that.

So we're going – they're going to know everything across the board about these protocols, why they work, why they're better, how they're cost-efficient, how they're time-efficient, how this can not only improve a soldier's life, but the life of the family child, second-order effects, go on and on and on. So the evidence is out there. The science is behind it. This isn't false hope. We're not offering any false hope. Everything is science, evidence-based reporting that we're doing, and based off Dr. Gordon's clinical application of years and years of doing it. So the short answer is yes, they're hearing about it and we have a five-year plan

to overtake the system and have them implement these on both sides of the house, so to speak. Now, for people who haven't heard any of our podcasts before and haven't heard your discussion about it, one of the biggest issues that we're experiencing with soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq is, if you hear my voice, I've got a little bit of a cold, ladies and gentlemen, traumatic brain injury. From eating elk. How dare you? It's pig. It was just bacon and a clam. A lot of soldiers are coming back from these wars with injuries that may have been fatal in the past. They're no longer because of all these advancements in medical technology, but they're still dealing with the ongoing effects of the war, the traumatic brain injury. Now, what you have found, and many others have supported this, is that a lot of this is there's damage to the pituitary gland.

It stops the production of hormones. This leads to deep depression. It leads to some pretty significant issues that soldiers are facing. So if you could just fill people in on that. Well, what we found is that because of the body armor being so efficient, a lot of the blast damage instead of killing someone is leaving them with trauma to the brain. In any form of trauma to the brain, whether or not it's a blast trauma, being hit on the head, slip and fall, automobile accident, turning upside down, or whatever the situation might be, the brain changes its chemistry because of inflammation. And that's from tearing of little nerves. It's not only the pituitary, and that's been some of the problem that we've had, is focusing,

as I focus on a narrow kind of diet, focusing in on just the pituitary, and that's been some of the problem that we've had, is focusing, as I focus on a narrow kind of diet, focusing in on just the pituitary. But what we found is a group of chemistry in the brain called neurosteroids, which regulate our personality. And some of those neurosteroids have names like testosterone or dihydrotestosterone, estrogen, pregnenolone. And the literature has been around since about 1986 showing that these regulate our brain function. So head trauma of any sort can cause it to decrease, number one. Number two, with any form of damage to the brain, you get inflammation. And that inflammation expands, let's say, if there was a small area of tear in the brain or a bullet that penetrated, penetrating injury to the head, that area where the bullet or the foreign object diminished the amount of brain tissue, it grows larger because of inflammation.

It destroys more and more neurons. And the more cells in the brain that are called neurons are destroyed, the greater the onset of cognitive impairment, your ability to use your brain in function, and then emotionality changes. Now, how did you get involved in this, and how did you figure out what so many people hadn't figured out? With the emphasis on therapy and pain medication, antidepressants, how did you see through that? Well, I really didn't discover anything. All I did was, in reading the literature as much as I read it, saw that people had already laid the pathway for me to follow. And I followed it intensely for the past, well, 21 years doing endocrinology and the past 10 years doing specifically neuroendocrinology, which deals with the brain.

of patients. I used to see them for hormone deficiency and then started going back asking them, those with the hormone deficiency, if they've had any kind of head trauma. And in the first book that I wrote, which had the first introduction for me to write about traumatic brain injury and hormone deficiency, was a young kid by the name of Michael who had been in a, who had come to me, his parents brought him in and he had hormone deficiency and we corrected his personality improved, his quality of life improved, and then read an article, which I've shared with you in the past, which came out of Turkey about pugilists who had this specific growth hormone deficiency, and that was my epiphany article, where I started looking further and further into literature, and Mutai, they had hormone deficiency, and then boom,

all the hormone deficiencies. So this kid, I went back to him and said, have you ever had any trauma of any kind? He said, well, when he was 17, he was 21 at the time. When he was 17, he was in a motorcycle accident, was in a coma for three days. He came out of the coma and his neurologist said, oh, you'll be fine. Well, he progressively got worse. So that set the stage for me to start looking at this relationship between any kind of head trauma. And then 2007, my first military was a Green Beret. I met the wife who was an emergency room doc in North Carolina. And she called me and told me about her husband, who was six tours of duty, was having some problems. We ran. We donated the money for him to get the full testing,

and it turned out he was hormone deficient. When we corrected his hormones, he was back in good light with the military. He was getting ready to get kicked out for insubordination. And that progressed on 2009 with opening up our practice to military. And it just kept on repeating itself, the same pattern, the same head trauma, blast injury, and hormone deficiency. And now how is this being received in,, if you look at the literature from 2012, 410,000 servicemen came back as veterans and were diagnosed with PTSD. Now, post-traumatic stress disorder is usually perceived as being a psychologically precipitated event where they witnessed something that was horrifying to them, death of a friend, loss of a limb, or whatever the situation might have been to stimulate it. And that immediately opened them up to simple treatment.

Here, take this packet of antidepressants, and you'll get better. Well, they didn't get better. So they didn't get better because they were having what's called treatment-resistant depression, which now we find is due to hormonal deficiency. If you look at the civilian population, people with treatment-resistant depression, you check them out and they're testosterone deficient or estrogen overdose or low progesterone or low pregnenolone, other chemicals that are in our brain. or low pregnenolone, other chemicals that are in our brain. And these individuals have been the foundation of what I do in trying to find a simple way to replenish them. What you have to do is test them, and that's not being done. It's so much easier just to hand a packet and say you have PTSD

when the majority of them are traumatic brain injury. And I was on Dr. Druscio with one of our patients who was Army corpsman, and he didn't have a single scratch on his body. But within two years of separating from the service, he started developing depression, mood swings, explosive personality. He ends up coming into our program, and we find out he has two and a half hormone deficiencies, and the pattern is indicative of having had head trauma. Well, it turned out he would walk behind Abramson tanks as they were discharging their shells, and he said, man, my body would shudder. And he was around Javelin missiles.

He was around repetitive gunfire. He personally didn't have a scratch on him. That's incredible that just the recoil, just the boom, just the sonic boom, the impact, that that, you know, shocking his body can do that to you. Right. There are books out, and the government has lots of books out on blast trauma. In fact, one of the amazing things for me to have read was the Army did a study on individuals who had had blast damage, blast trauma. No physical ailment, just blast. And they put them on a simple product called N-acetylcysteine, N-A-C, and those that were on it got better.

But how come we're not hearing about... What is that stuff? N-acetylcysteine, it's a precursor to glutathione, which is the number one anti-inflammatory, excuse me, anti-free radical antioxidant system in our brain. And it becomes deficient. It's endogenous within our system. And glutathione is the same stuff that you recommend taking after you booze it, right? Well, yeah. Glutathione helps with metabolism in the liver to detoxify. Here's the thing about NAC, though, also, that Mark told me, and I'm on that product, but if I was taking that while I was still operating, the problems that I had never would have happened.

They would have cut it off. So we can essentially cut off these problems just by being proactive and preventative in this way. So if we were right now today to administer to all special operations soldiers NAC, a lot of these problems that we're having, out the window. That's crazy. That's crazy, right? It's true. Preventative medicine. You know, a lot of what's going on is all, you know, trying to catch up, always trying to catch up with what we do is proactive. We see patterns in the blood that if we let them keep on sliding until they're sick, they'll get even absolutely sick.

And the medical model right now is right this second you're not sick, let's wait until you get sick before we do something. One of the more shocking things in working with the UFC is we got involved with, we do these events called Fight for the Troops. We do them on bases. And we got involved with the Intrepid Foundation for Excellence. You find out how little money the government gives them and how much they have to raise outside and doing functions like these big UFC events. And that, to me, was one of the most disturbing things about those events. I'm like, how is it possible that we can have all this money for all these different missions, all this money for all these different things, but we don't have money to take care of these

guys when they come back home? That seems criminal. It's unethical at a minimum. To the highest level. I mean, this is... If you count on soldiers to do what you

ask of them and put their body on the line to complete missions, and then you don't take care of them when they come back, how do you ever expect anybody to be patriotic? Well, here's the thing, Joe. Like, there's millions of dollars spent on me personally, on my training, and then you can't put a number on that experience, right?

So to produce a special operations soldier, millions of dollars. So it makes sense to put in proper preventative programs to make sure those guys are performing at elite levels, right? We're going to do that for our weapon systems. We're going to do that for our vehicles, for our aircraft. Why would we not do that for the same thing as our guys? But you know what? We're not waiting for anybody else to come up and say, okay, we're going to do this. I'm following Dr. Gordon's lead, started the foundation, and we're doing it. And we're changing it from the inside out, from top to bottom, from bottom to top. Well, I think maybe it takes guys like you that are

on the inside to do that. I feel like the bureaucrats, the people that are in the air-conditioned offices that are deciding where money goes, they don't have a stake in it. They're disconnected. They're disconnected. So they don't feel it and they don't understand it, but it's, it's simple because we're providing science evidence-based solutions, not, not a bitching or griping, complaining, offering solutions based on science. And how long have you been involved with this foundation? We started January 1 of this year. Yeah. So just kicking off, just getting, yeah, I was just medically retired in June. So I started up.

I was actually, I had to go outside of the military medical system to get alternative treatment. Alternative being not medication, not psychotherapy. When I mean medication, very similar to when Matt Gosling was on here, the Navy SEAL. You know, I was on 13 different meds. And before you know it, like, you're just you're not the person that you used to be. You know, I was an elite, capable of performing at elite level and situations of life and death consistently and reliably. And then all of a sudden, I have a problem, you know, handling things that just don't add up. You know, your behavior is not right.

I can't remember things driving home. I don't know where I'm at. Five years I've driven that route every day. All of a sudden, I look up. You don't know where you're at. Writing a sentence in the middle of it, I don't know what I'm writing about. You know what I mean? So those kind of things. So it was easy for me to put my hand up and say, hey, this is, something's going on here. This is not right. And I was basically saying, hey, I'm on fire. Somebody's put this fire out. and this kept throwing medication and medication and medication. And then you start having anxiety attacks, which was completely foreign to me, right?

That was something that some other person, a weak person's problem as I perceived it. And now I'm having these anxiety attacks where I'm breaking down emotionally and crying in public. And I can't, I have no control over it. And happening in front of my family, my wife, my kids. And I was just like, hey, enough is enough. And going out, trying to find different things led me to Mark, Dr. Gordon,

and he introduced me to his protocols. He actually sent me an email, and in the first line he says, hey, Andrew, you know, I'm this, and we're doing this, and I'm not a kook, by the way. And I was like, okay, I like that. I like that guy. That's debatable, right? I like that guy, yeah. Very debatable. Great introduction. I'm not a kook. I the way. And I was like, okay, I like that. That's debatable, right? I like that guy, yeah. Very debatable. Great introduction. I'm not a kook.

I'm interested in what he's doing. Kooks will always tell you they're not kooks. Of course, yeah. No kook, though, by the way. That's why I was drawn to him, by the way. I'm crazy. So do you have a specific injury or a specific moment where things change for you? I was an explosive breacher, so I was in around

explosions for my entire career. You know what I mean? I was only knocked unconscious one time in combat. But the thing that Mark was saying, and this goes outside the veteran population, this goes with anybody, but the symptoms can come in months, weeks, years, days, whatever, symptoms can come in months, weeks, years, days, whatever, later, right? So it wasn't attributed to any one thing. So six months later, after my last deployment, I'm starting to have these problems, they're starting to manifest. And when I'm when I'm bringing this up to the attention, you know, it's like, okay, well, this is a psychological issue. And I'm like, well, I've been doing this for a long time. This is what I want to be doing. That's bullshit. It's not a psychological issue. And you know, here's why I wouldn't be able for a long time. This is what I want to be doing. That's bullshit. It's not a psychological issue.

And, you know, here's why. I wouldn't be able to perform like this, and all of a sudden I just can't do it. And so that was just very frustrating, you know, in that regard, trying to come out and try to find some real answers. And only, like Mark said, what it takes is an individualized approach, right, that uses evidence-based diagnostics to pinpoint and treat the underlying condition. But nobody was trying to figure out my whole story. And when you don't do that, you just find out what the symptoms are, and you treat those symptoms with medication, then you're not doing anything to fix it. So that's kind of why it's hard for, I think, the medical community to understand it right now,

because if you have a problem and you can't necessarily attribute that to a major accident or a major injury or a major explosion, then it's like, okay, well, we don't know what it is. It's a psychological problem. We're going to put him on packet A, and we'll see how he is in two weeks. Yeah, that expression, psychological issue, is a real tricky one, isn't it? Because your psychological makeup a lot of times is dependent upon your physical health. And what's going on in your body can greatly affect your mind. But when someone says psychological issue, especially for a guy like you, what they're trying to say is

that you're weak. Right. They're trying to say that you can't handle the pressure absolutely and that you're cracking and this is what it is right now it's the integrity of it's called comorbid and this is an argument that's going back between the psychiatric world and the non psychiatric world where in comorbid which came first the situation that precipitated depression or the depression that develops the situation? In this particular instance relative to Andrew is his chemistry of his body was doing great until he had that group of insults to him, whether or not it was that huge truck that got blown up 100 feet in the air and you got the shockwave that knocked you out, that huge truck that got blown up 100 feet in the air and you got the shockwave that knocked you out,

or the repetitive gunfire that you had, or the breaching that you were doing. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? It's different for everybody. Everybody is so different. So what happens is as you start losing these hormones, I mean, one of the hormones that I've repeated a number of times, and I'll repeat again, pregnenolone has been found to control the anxiety effect in the body, in the brain. So morning anxiety or pregnenolone or social anxiety can be affected. And, you know, I have patients who have been in auto accidents who never had anxiety attacks or panic attacks, and they wake up six months after the injury and they've got morning anxiety yeah there are pregnant alone

levels instead of being average about 110 or down at six or seven you correct them back to 110 their anxiety disappears what is pregnant pregnant alone is called the mother of all hormones it comes from cholesterol it's the first hormone or steroid hormone, official steroid hormone that comes off of cholesterol. So if we interrupt cholesterol in our body, we lose pregnenolone, which becomes the precursor to DHEA and testosterone on one side and progesterone and cortisol on another side. cortisol on another side. So with low pregnenolone, it can lead to all the hormones that help to regulate our brain function and our life. Cortisol, if you don't have cortisol, you get a syndrome called Adsen's disease and you can die. And most people associate cortisol with high levels of it being problematic, right? Stress, correct. Stress. Stress related. And, you know, everybody thinks it's emotional stress, but there are five stressors. You know, there's emotional or intellectual stress, emotional stress, physical stress,

nutritional stress can precipitate high amount of cortisol. If you're fasting, cortisol goes up. And then there's chemical stress like chemotherapy or certain medication that you take alcohol to, certain drugs can do it. And they can influence the adrenal glands production of cortisol, Certain drugs can do it. And they can influence the adrenal glands production of cortisol, which is called an adaptogen, which allows you to go from one level of physical functioning, mental functioning to another. It adapts, helps you to adapt. You know, I got to tell you, when I have these conversations with you about this issue,

it's kind of frustrating to me because it seems like you're making all this sense and you're talking about this this this broad spectrum of different hormones and all these different variables that exist in the human mind and how important they are to maintain proper levels of them for health for function but you're just not a lot of people like you out there they're talking about this like this is what you're saying is is a fairly controversial treatment dr gordon put it to me like this. He's like, this is like 1960, and we're saying we're going to put a man on the moon by 1969, and everybody says you guys are batshit crazy. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That's where we're at. It seems like, is it because there's not a lot of motivation for innovation when it comes to treatment, or what's the resistance to understanding all these different variables? If for 30 plus years you've been told that you treat depression by giving this pill, that's either an SSRI or an ABCD or whatever it is, you're going to give that pill. Right. comes in and says, look, the literature for the past 35 years, even as far back as 1958 with DHEA showing that DHEA is antidepressant, you come in with these natural products that

have no patents on it, that you can walk into a GNC, you can get it from Onnit, you can get it from any of these companies and take it natural, 100% natural coming from Mexican wild yams, and it fixes your depression. And it costs you three cents a day, five cents a day, 10 cents a day, as opposed to the cost for some of these other medication. Who are you going to believe? This kook who talks about over-the-counter product or the pharmaceutical rep who talks about this prescription medication? That is the problem, right? Official sounding names and designations. Correct.

And I got it. And it's an uphill battle in the way that I approach it with my science background, not just medical, but the science research I did in the beginning, is to line up all the information, irrefutable information, and hand it to someone And read it See for a dummy like me Who's obviously on the outside of all this What frustrates me You got me in trouble

You put that picture when we had lunch together And you stood here with the brilliant Dr. Gordon I got a lot of shit from your people Why? Because they said that you're a smart guy And I said that you're absolutely a brilliant guy. Trust me, I'm a dummy. Don't listen to those people.

They're dummies, too. If they think I'm smart, it's because they're dumber than me. So call me dumb, please. But what I'm saying is, like, for someone like me that has zero science background, what I always assume is that the way things got better and the way people figured things out is that they just looked at the facts, and then when new facts came in, they adjusted accordingly. But it seems like there's resistance against that.

Correct. The status quo is very clearly we hand everybody this antidepressant. We're not going to hand them this natural product that's been shown since 1986, 1958 on another large group of research to be beneficial double-blind washout studies for benefit and depression. Natural product. They don't want to use natural products because it's, in essence, as I see it, stating that, well, you don't really need the pharmaceutical. You can just get a natural product. So do you think there's just so much money involved in pushing the pharmaceutical drugs

that these doctors are reluctant to go against it or not prescribe it or to step out on a limb? Well, you know, the medical community, the medical boards of every state, it's the standard of care in your community, which means that if there are 100 doctors in a community of physicians, and the standard for 99% of them is to use SSRI, the one doctor who uses a non-SSRI can be pulled into the medical board as practicing outside the scope of the medical community, as well as doctors in general don't want to be looked at as being that one person who is trying to introduce something new, revolutionary,

something that's worked, something they worked very diligently at for 21 years to show the science and the clinical cases that it works. It's a maverick, and our medical society doesn't work with mavericks. It works with mass. There's a lot of forces that are kind of stacked up against it, but that doesn't mean that that's a reason to cower and not stand up to it, right? I mean, it's either right or it isn't right. And we're saying, Dr. Gordon is right. And we're going to fight it to our last breath to change it. I mean, 300 million people in America are on antidepressants. And if you're on an antidepressant and you're still depressed, guess what? It's probably not, that's probably not the underlying condition.

It's what science has shown us is a hormonal imbalance. We're able to interdict that and effectively treat it. And the problem is, you know, using the term hormone, I've been slowly getting away from the term hormone. Neuroactive steroid. That's right. Neuroactive steroids. Neuroactive steroids. Neuroactive steroids are, we we'll say neurosteroids it was found in 1986 by a dr blue out of

bay lou out of paris france that the brain has the chemistry to take cholesterol and to make it into testosterone make it into pregnenolone make it into progesterone allopregnanolone in the brain for many many years bione, in the brain. For many, many years, biopsies of the brain would find testosterone in it, and they thought it came from your testicles or thyroid in the brain. It came from your thyroid gland in the neck. What we're finding is neurosteroids are made what we call de novo within the brain itself. And when you have trauma or inflammation, you lose that.

And that's why I believe, based on reading the literature and my interpretation that's what could be faulted how I interpret it is that that is the cause for all the transitions in the brain but there are receptors in the brain that regulate how nerves conduct and what they found is these nerves have not only magnesium zinc, there's a valium receptor, and they found a pregnenolone receptor. So they found a receptor which pregnenolone works to regulate, to smooth out, to calm you down so that you're not having panic attacks or emotional turpitude and yelling, screaming, and picking up a gun and shooting someone or throwing something or yelling or beating

someone up, getting assault charges. The sympathetic nervous system has just gone crazy. The entire nervous system goes off. So in a sense, what you're saying is there's different types of testosterone, different types of hormones that are produced in different areas of the body. That's not just your testicles that are doing it. Correct. It's the same testosterone.

in different areas of the body that it's not just your testicles that are doing it? Correct. It's the same testosterone. You know, people talk about bioequivalent, bio, what is it? Bioequivalent, bioidentical hormones. Testosterone to be testosterone has to be equal, bioequivalent. So the brain produces the same testosterone as the testicles. The brain produces the same pregnenolone as the cholesterol elsewhere in the body. So when the brain is injured, it no longer produces it at the correct levels?

Correct. You lose it. In studies that are done in Alzheimer's patients, they found the frontal lobes of the brain, which regulate executive function, making sure that you make the right decision, you're able to make the coffee in the right sequence, making sure the butter's at the end, is all regulated by the frontal part of the brain, which is the most common area that is damaged in to and fro kind of auto accidents or explosions throwing you back. So they found pregnenolone and allopregnenolone deficiency, the same thing we're finding in boxers, in pugilists, in MMA, in everybody. There's a deficiency.

And I think I shared with you, NFL did a study where they found that 19 times faster NFL players are 19 times more prone to develop Alzheimer's disease between 30 and 50 years of age. Wow. Wait a second. 30 years of age developing Alzheimer's? Did you see that recent study that said 96% of all former players have CTE? 96%? 96%.

That's incredible. Let's see. It was 97 out of 98 people, brains that were tested had CTE, which I guess is 96%. Phenomenal. And why don't they do the same testing for military soldiers when they come back? Yeah, what Dr. Gordon was saying about all the different neurosteroids, for instance, like cholesterol, he's saying is a precursor to testosterone. But if you take a statin drug that lowers your cholesterol, guess what the byproduct that is? It messes up your testosterone.

So what we're understanding is our chemistry is all linked, man. It's all together. You can't just treat testosterone if the stuff above it is affected and you're not treating that. Well, guess what? The military model doesn't even test for that. And if you're not treating things below testosterone that that produces at that level, if it's deficient or insufficient, then you're not going to get what you need. So until you look at your body, your chemistry as a whole, and you interdict it accordingly,

you're going to continue to have these mass problems across the board, and the ones that are manifesting with soldiers, with fighters, with football players. And then if you take these drugs and alter it, then with the civilian population as well. So it's not just the civilian population as well. So it's not just like a niche market here. It's everybody is affected by this. So this is what's amazing about what Dr. Gordon is doing.

It can fix a lot of things. One of the things that has just come up on the table is looking back at the 1,000-plus people that we've put on a program. Unfortunately, we only have about 50 veterans on the program. The rest are civilians. What we're seeing is those that are addicted to opioids or narcotics or alcohol addiction are able to get off it rapidly. When Matthew was on here, Matthew was on 15 different drugs. Of that grouping, he was on eight OxyContin a day. And I spoke to him recently specifically about this. He was taking it for 18 months. He was on morphine, 40 tablets. It's either 40 or 60 milligrams per tablet. And then a fentanyl patch, which is a pain patch. And in six weeks, he was off of 14 of his 15

medications. A pain patch on top of all those pills? Correct. He had surgery on his jaw with six pins. He had shrapnel pulled out of his left occiput, and he had his left leg, I think it was, shot out, and he had chronic pain. That's why he was on all these pain medications. He's off all that now. Wow. Because vitamin D deficiency has been found to be a cause for inflammation. It also, low vitamin D, you have a very low pain threshold. Increasing vitamin D improves that. Testosterone changes how we perceive pain. Stabilizing the pregnenolone

and all those hormones in the brain changes how we perceive life. When you're depressed, you perceive pain, very little pain as big pain. When you're not depressed, okay, bump yourself and get better. Wow. You know, when we were having this conversation at lunch, when we were talking about this, you were bringing up stem cells and the effect that stem cells are having and stem cell injections on people that have all sorts of serious traumatic injuries. Is that with the brain as well? Have they figured out how to squirt that shit into your dome? Yeah. In, let's see, 2000 and I think 12, I went to Germany, to Düsseldorf, Germany, to work for the doctors there, who was taking autologous stem cells.

He'd take out of the patient stem cells, send them to Israel to get them augmented, to increase the amount, and get them back in 48 hours. And then this absolutely incredible three-dimensional which is that fluid compartment in the brain, and injected the stem cells. And it spread out to the brain stem because this gentleman had a brain stem hemorrhage. And within 48 hours to 72 hours, he started having these improvements, hearing improved, physical functioning. He was in a wheelchair with a belt to hold him in place. He was in a wheelchair with a belt to hold him in place. Three days later, he's not using a belt.

For 12 years since he had his stroke, he wasn't able to pick up a coffee cup, a coffee mug, and hold it. He could only use a straw. He was picking up his coffee cup and drinking it. So there are places around the planet that are using stem cells in people with Alzheimer's, with ALS, with traumatic brain injury, and it's getting benefits. There are benefits. In my projects in Beijing, China, the stem cells called mesenchymal stem cells, which are the ones that a lot of the organs come from, in diabetics, injecting one injection of 10 million mesenchymal cells into the patient through an IV. 30% of them lost their diabetes.

45% had a decrease in their insulin requirement. And 25% of them didn't have any effect. Wow. And this is a center with 26 MD, PhDs in Beijing that tops in their field. So there's a lot of hope in that as well. Correct. Yeah, that seems like something that would, if you're injecting it, especially directly into the traumatic area that's experienced trauma.

Yeah, there's an orthopedic buddy of mine, Santoro, who was using autologous stem cells that he'd pull out a patient and inject it into the knees and get rebuild of the knees without needing surgery. What I'm hearing, too, is about rebuilding cartilage. Correct. That people have had bone-on-bone cartilage, they're rebuilding it? Correct. There are a couple of protocols.

There was one by Dr. Alan R. Dunn out of Miami, an orthopedic surgeon, who showed that if you go in with an arthroscopic scope and you use a burr, which is like a sandpaper device, and you rub the bone and then inject it with growth hormone, that he was able to get 5 to 10 millimeters of regeneration of cartilage. In our office, we use prolifer. That's huge. Significant. And he did a Harvard study. His publication came in Harvard. He patented the we use prolotherapy. That's huge. Significant. And he did a Harvard

study. His publication came in Harvard. He patented the protocol. 10 millimeters. That's thick. 10 millimeters. That's incredible. Not 10 centimeters, 10 millimeters, 25. Still, that's a pad. Yeah. It's a nice thickness that developed. But no one's doing that because it's illegal to use growth hormone in that fashion. Growth hormone has a very restricted use parameters on it. Why is that? Because it's like baseball players and shit? Well, I think that had a lot to do with it.

Public impressions of it? This stuff works. Yeah. It works phenomenally well. That's so frustrating to me when something that's really, really effective gets illegal because athletes are using it and becoming more effective. It's so silly. It's a complete misconception and it's ludicrous. If the goal, if the true altruistic goal in medicine is to fix people, then why are we being restricted in using the things that we see fixing people?

Well the stem cell stuff was, everybody was always worried that people were going to get it from fetuses and then somehow it was going to encourage abortions, until they figured out how to get it from other means. And once they figured out how to get it from other means, now that debate's off the table. But for the longest time, that was the big issue. Like during the Bush administration, they held back stem cell research because of the right-wing Christians. Right.

I think there's- Preposterous. Yeah. It's so fucking crazy. What... Preposterous. They say one cell. Single cell. We're talking about a single cell here. Single cell. Yeah. I think it's, what, 10 years that they put the moratorium

on doing any research in stem cells, which is giving Switzerland, is giving China, is giving Russia, you know. Yeah, massive advantage. To be diagnosed clinically as dead, you have to be brain dead. So if there's not even a brain in there, how can you say that taking a single cell, I mean, picking your nose is going to kill more single cells than doing that for stem cell research. Stop that.

Yeah, quit killing your single cells. But the repercussion of that is a game changer for everything. Yeah. You know, I used to think of stem cells as, wow, that's kind of interesting. Some future therapy, that's going to be cool cool until I got a shot into my shoulder and then I'm like holy fuck like this is nuts right like this shoulder does bother me for a year not bother me at all anymore how quick turnaround was that a couple weeks well in a couple weeks it started feeling great now it's two months out now it's been two months out I don't have any

pain P PRP or stem cells? Stem cells. Where'd they get the stem cells? Placenta. Oh, placenta. They have a technique which is PRP, which is platelet-rich. Yeah. Plasma, which is similar to Right. It gets a buffy coat. Well, it's similar to Regenicaine, right?

Except that they don't, Regenicaine is that stuff that Dr. Peter Welling figured out in Germany. That's the blood-spinning procedure. They heat up the blood. Yeah, this is a more advanced version of platelet-rich plasma. And what they do in, I think it was Australia, they expose it to a special frequency of ultraviolet light

to take care of any of the inflammatory chemistry that's in there through photo deactivation and the prp works very well seen you know and it's something that's more acceptable than doing autologous stem cell which there's a number of ways to do with those the point there's a number of different ways to get stem cells yeah well a lot of ufc fighters are getting it now and what they're doing a good percentage of them are they get their fat sucked out of their body yeah adipose yeah and then they're turning that into stem cells then shooting into their knees and their shoulders and what have you and having incredible results a lot of mma fired a lot of grapplers are doing it i need to get that done yeah dude i'm telling you man i i i mean i don't know if mine's an isolated incident but but I'm just so blown away. I was on the verge of surgery. I was thinking, okay, I'll be out for three months.

I'll be in a sling for eight weeks. I was going over my head. How much downtime? What could I do during that downtime? I was preparing to have a useless shoulder. Now, all of a sudden, I'm doing everything. I mean, with zero pain. It makes some weird noises still.

It's kind of crunchy. But there's no pain and no restriction in movement. There's no impingements. Jerking off is no problem. I have a non-union in my left fibula, so it's broken. And I would love to do that. A non-union in your fibula. Fibula is a small bone.

Yeah, non-weight-bearing bone. I have a metal, a titanium plate, and it got broken two pieces on my first deployment. And I just never had it fixed. So the plate's broken too? Yeah, the plate's broken. And so they wanted to fix it, but it was like a nine-month rehab. And I was like, no way. Nine months?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it doesn't work now, right? Right. So they would take the titanium. Yeah, absolutely. But it doesn't work now, right? Right. So they would take the titanium plate out, re-graph it, have the graph it, take stuff from my hip, apparently. And I was just like, it's not worth it. I'm just going to keep on keeping on. And then I found out about stem cells, and I'm just going to wait until I can do that. I'll be back next week.

And can the stem cells fix that? They can help with uh bones that are non if they're close enough help with non-union fusion help with fusion well yeah it could help regenerate and then thus speed up the uh the turn of the therapy time the turnaround time till you're well again you know right so if it's three you know if it's nine months now maybe it's three months i mean that to me is a win it's just so frustrating when you hear about how much time they they spent banning stem cell research because of the new research they're doing now on regenerating things.

I mean, they've sequenced the gene of the flatworm, and they think they're going to be able to figure out within X amount of years how to regenerate limbs. Like, what the fuck, man? I mean, we're getting into some really crazy area with innovative science and medicine So what do we do we stop using all the technology that can help people today waiting for the technology of a decade from now Well, that's even sillier. You know definitely It's it's so fast no reasons being applied this problem Yeah

Well, it seems to me that that that stem cells would be a really good one for people with traumatic brain injury. I mean, what do you think about that? No, I think stem cells is a good option. But what is it that you're looking at? You're looking at someone who has had a loss of a segment of their brain. You want to try and regenerate it. Is that possible? Well, we know from studies that were done back in 1911. There was Dr. Cajal, 1928. There's a doc up in McGill University, a guru, Toro Oguro, who does regenerative research. The only reason why nerves can't regenerate is because they're in a non-permissive environment, is what I call it. non-permissive environment is what I call it, a lecture I give on this specific topic,

is that there are so many chemicals in the brain that are trying to foster regeneration of nerves. Like, for instance, UCLA is doing a study on a byproduct of progesterone called allopregnanolone, which is neuroregenerative, synaptogenic, which means that the connection from one nerve to another nerve is a synapse. If it's damaged, it can regenerate it. Also, allopregnanolone is a free radical scavenger. As we age, as our biochemistry changes and the energy production in our brain through mitochondria changes, a lot more of oxidation occurs or free radicals, and that's called oxidative stress. And it's believed, especially in great articles by a gentleman at USC, Caleb Finch, talks about aging of the brain and loss of our functioning due to this oxidative stress. And he believes that oxidative stress leads to hormone deficiency, leads to physical deficiency, and death.

deficiency leads to physical deficiency and death. A recent group of articles showed we're seeing a lot of a type of diabetes called insulin resistant diabetes where you're making too much insulin because it's not being recognized by the cells. So they found in these group of articles came out that if there's inflammation of an area of the brain called the hypothalamus which regulates our energy use that it could predispose you to developing this situation called insulin-resistant diabetes or the metabolic syndrome. So we've been tracking our patient population who have had significant head trauma, whether or not it's blast with physical injury or blunt head injury, someone who fell off a second story and hit their head, was unconscious for a month, they're developed, they've developed or they came

into the office already with this insulin resistance. And it's easy to fix. Correct their hormones, give them chromate, and monitor them. What's chromate? Chromate is a mineral, a metal, which is important for insulin recognition at the cell wall. And it was called by C. Everett Koop the insulin tolerant factor back in the late 90s. So this chromium hooked up to a niacin called chromium polynicotinate. The trade name is called chromate.

We use it for our patients with this type 2 diabetes called insulin resistance, and they all reverse. They all get better. Their blood sugar is stabilized, their fats get better, and their insulin comes down. So we had, in fact, one of our neighbors had an insulin level 117. It should be less than 25. Once we corrected his testosterone and his chromium, his levels dropped down below 30, which is where you'd like to have it. You know, I was listening to this Radiolab podcast recently, and they were talking about lithium. There's a woman who takes lithium because she's, I guess it's bipolar.

And I didn't know lithium is just a salt. Yeah, lithium chloride. Yeah, sodium. It's just an element. Carbonate. She takes thisium. Lithium chloride. It's just an element. Carbonate. She takes this, and she's fine. Yeah. I haven't looked at it, but there are people, you can buy it over the counter now.

Lithium? Yeah. Lithium you can buy over the counter, and I haven't- For what? That's what I need to go learn. Lithium. Yeah, because it seems like, for meantly when i heard that i was like i thought lithium was some hardcore prozac type drug that you know they put people on when they're out

of their fucking mind i didn't think it was just a salt yeah it's metal was it beneficial dr gordon or can that be no it was beneficial i i'm starting to what started it was i would see patients coming in with bipolar and being on lithium and then started seeing patients who were coming in on it you know just taking us because of articles in life extension magazine or one of those other science-based journals or magazines but I haven't had a chance to to go and look at it closely but it it's very impressive. It's the metals, you know. It's like magnesium works on one of the brain receptors that if you take magnesium, it'll make you calm. Magnesium, metal.

You're talking about a salt. Magnesium, carbonate, magnesium. Well, zinc makes your testosterone go up, right? Correct. Zinc's involved in 300 processes in the body. It's antiviral, anti-cancer, and it's anti-Alzheimer's. And 300 processes in the body. One of them isiral, anti-cancer, and it's anti-Alzheimer's. And 300 processes in the body. One of them is a natural aromatase inhibitor. So I've never used Arimidex in my practice or

anastrosol in my practice. What does that mean, aromatase inhibitor? Aromatase. Well, testosterone converts to estradiol naturally. And the body adapts to what we do to it. If you give an overwhelming amount of testosterone to the body, the body says, oh, now what am I going to do with this? So it'll either send it down to estrogen, estradiol, or it'll send it to another thing called dihydrotestosterone. Estradiol, obviously, you get man boobs, you get crying, wimping, and so forth. And DHT causes hair loss, causes testicles to shrink. I like how you looked at my head when you said that. You sat up.

My back. So there are side effects. So in replenishing testosterone, you have to be careful with the balance you use. Otherwise, you start throwing things in like anastrozole, which blocks estradiol, which is extremely important for generating growth hormone in the brain, helping blood flow, and keeping the immune system unique to the brain functional. So, you know, everything we do, there's always a risk to benefit factor that needs to be looked at. And I think that some of the risk factors are being ignored. This woman in this Radiolab podcast,

she was having an issue with kidney failure, and they were going to make her get off of the lithium. So lithium has a negative effect? Toxicity. Well, it has toxicity and it's dose-dependent toxicity. And then the uniqueness of a person's biochemistry can make a very low amount toxic for you where another person, it's meaningless. So for this woman, it was this massive conflict because this stuff was saving her and she had allowed her to be herself. And now all of a sudden they were telling her you're gonna have To get off of it and she had been off of it before and just lost her marbles. Mm-hmm Saving her and killing her at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy

It's a is there another way that people can avoid that? Is there is there's another way that they could avoid the effects of being bipolar? Exercise diet anything. Well, do you want to say anything about that Andrew? Is there another way that they could avoid the effects of being bipolar, exercise, diet, anything? Well, do you want to say anything about that, Andrew? We think that you can treat that by treating the neuroactive steroids in the brain. And it's been shown that it's been backed up by evidence and proof in his clinical application as well that that's very much the case. So how does that work? as well that that's very much the case. So how's that work? Testosterone is generally perceived as being a sex hormone or being a reproductive hormone. What we're finding is that it's involved

in an incredible array of different processes in the body. Studies on the emotional center of the brain, the limbic system, found that it helps to stabilize panic and also anger and aggression and reactiveness to our environment. If it's low, you're hyperreactive. They're finding that in anorexia nervosa, women who are starving themselves, who have psychological issues to it, if they don't respond to treatment, giving them testosterone improves it.

So what we're starting to see is these neuro steroids and neuroactive steroids have influence on an array of psychological or mood disorders. And one of them is in bipolar, in the case that we're just touching on, a gentleman who was diagnosed with bipolar by the military and was put on to lithium and also ADD at the same time. And then what happened was he was given a challenge test with a low dose of testosterone, and within 32 hours or so, his symptoms disappeared. That's incredible. The combination of things working together synergistically is one of the most incredible parts of it. Correct.

And this is something that it just seems that a lot of people are just simply not aware of. Correct. The analogy that I use is brand new Corvettes are absolutely bitching cars. And it's like having a Corvette with four flat tires. Now all we're going to do is we're going to fill up one of the tires with air, and you're going to try and drive the car. You're not going to be able to drive the car. Let's fill up the front two tires and drive.

Okay, let's go and fill up three and a half tires, and you're going to drive. It's not going to happen. The synergy is in all the hormones that we have in our body, all the chemistry work together to give us a level of benefit of function that one by itself cannot do. And if you look at the failure reports that are in traumatic brain injuries since 1959, it's called a futility failure, where these big pharmaceutical companies took these great drugs and gave one product to an individual with traumatic brain injury, and they didn't get any benefit greater than 10%. That's called failure or futility failure.

And it's because, and other people are writing the because, is because our system is so complex. How do you expect one product to fix it? It can't. And how do you expect it? Everything's got to be balanced. It's all got to be balanced There's such an issue in this country when it comes to mental health That mental health doesn't get looked at like the health of a bone or the health of a muscle You know if you have a torn muscle you have to get an emergency operation to reattach it, but if you your brain is fucked It's like come on. don't be a pussy. Yeah.

You know, toughen up or, you know, stop being so down on yourself. We're the sum of our chemistry. I mean, that's the deal. And when that's affected, that's when you have these different things that manifest. And that's why we're seeing so many of the vets coming back and committing suicide, because they've been instilled with exactly what you said. Don't be a pussy. You know, man up and do it.

And that's why it was easy for me to say, well, I can speak to my credibility that that's not the case. So let's find some damn answers because I'm falling off the crazy train. Right, right, right. Yeah, for a guy like you, that's where it's so clear. It's like you know you're not a pussy, so what the hell's going on? Yeah, exactly. Whereas people that have self-doubt, it's like, well, maybe I right. Yeah. For a guy like you, that's where it's so clear. It's like, you know, you're not a pussy. So what the hell's going on? Yeah, exactly. Whereas people that have self-doubt, it's like, well, maybe I just can't. Right. Well, maybe they're right. And maybe what the psychologist says is right. Maybe I should take this medication.

And now that's compounding a problem and making it even bigger. And that's why we're having all these suicides. And also, you know, one of the things that's been fascinating to me over the last couple years is finding out all the different Things that we do that change the hormone levels of our body like all the different things you could do during the day That up your testosterone including like just what they call peacocking Driving a nice car around a bunch of young ladies Actually right rises raises your testosterone like what the fuck is going on with our bodies like how weird is it that there's like moods the changing in mood like happy moments correct like literally will change the chemical evolution evolution of man you know I mean and that was a natural selection that when

women were around I was gonna you know you're gonna work up and gotta get ready to party in when a woman ovulates at day 14, 15, 16, there's a spike in testosterone. So she's ovulating. She has a spike in her testosterone. What does she want to do? Get her party on. Get a party on. She wants to get that fertilization dance going.

Well, that fertilization dance. Doesn't that happen? That happens also to a lot of women that get older. When they put them on hormone replacement. Once they experience menopause, they have more testosterone. They get hornier. Correct. If you just follow aging of men and women, as men who are testosterone-based age, they lose their testosterone and they have more estrogen.

That's why we become pussies as we get older. Women, on the other hand, lose their estrogen and gain more testosterone. That's why you start seeing facial hair, and they start taking the command position in the relationship as they get older. And it's this flipping of the hormones. Hey, Dr. Gordon, I wanted to touch on the, and Joe, you asked about it, the able to regrow anything in the brain. It's called neuroplasticity, right, you asked about it, the able to regrow anything in the brain. It's called neuroplasticity.

Right, Dr. Gordon? And I wanted to dumb it down for the listeners or guys that maybe are like me that are listening. So are we able to fix our brains? And science has said yes. And I found this out before I met Dr. Gordon. And I was hearing about some of these things in treatments I was at about neuroplasticity and basically being able to regenerate the neuronal pathways. Okay? neuroplasticity and basically being able to regenerate the neuronal pathways okay

so we have shearing shearing of the neurons and a traumatic brain injury and and that causes all some of the issues that we have but what we now know is we can form new neuronal pathways in the brain and we can stimulate stimulate that through a number of ways learning something that you've never learned will stimulate that treating it with what ways. Learning something that you've never learned will stimulate that. Treating it with what you're deficient in, you know, steroid-wise will fix that. So we thought, like, can you teach an old dog new tricks? We thought the answer was no, but now we know that that's not correct.

We can regenerate neuronal pathways in the brain. Anybody can do it, and you can keep yourself. You can continue to get sharper as your age through these treatments. I think people get sharper too when they try new things. Absolutely. And that's part of the science behind, okay, well that builds new neural pathways. And we didn't think that that was possible. I don't know how long we just figured that out. But when I heard that two years ago and people were telling me, hey, this is the new you,

just accept it. And I was like, was like well this the last class I was any Tommy about neuroplasticity so which one is it right you either can regenerate and renew or you can't I think it was Fort Collins and a dr. Twilley Twilley who was doing just that introducing to vets who had dramatic brain injury with Nintendo with certain type of gains to get the visual manual dexterity which would help to improve their cognitive ability because of doing just that using learning something new uh what's that uh thing called sudoku sudoku yeah sudoku which forces you to do uh intense thinking which can help build new pathways.

In literature that I used to read in Alzheimer's, I have a lecture on it, they found that if you looked at the academic experience of an individual when they get Alzheimer's, the people who have the highest academic achievements, meaning MDs, PhDs, and so forth, compared to people who just have a high school diploma, that those people with a higher education have a slower progression of Alzheimer's disease. And that's because they've built parallel pathways, a lot of pathways. So if you lose this pathway, you've got this one as an alternate back door, back-up system. Side door, yeah.

So, you know. But it also makes sense in relation to exercise. Like the more exercise, I mean, people don't exercise. Absolutely. They experience atrophy. Right. When, you know, your life has the exact same path every day, the exact same stimuli. Nothing varies.

When that happens, it's very easy for your mind to just atrophy your processes. If you don't challenge yourself in life, then you're going to atrophy in every area. So that's the onus on the individual. You know what I mean? Yeah, and that's also why people that are sort of adrenaline junkies, they kind of ramp it up all the time more and more and more until the other people around them are like, you're fucking getting a little crazy here, buddy.

But it's because it takes more for them to get that juice right they don't get it from the original their baseline is pushed higher you know I have patients who get onto a program and after four or six months they say doc I don't feel the same as I did at the beginning I said well at the beginning you were at zero now were at zero. Now you're at a hundred. We're at the top. Right. What more you've already had that contrast from zero to a hundred. And the analogy I use is, you know, it's a hundred degrees outside and you've got a pool that's 86 degrees. When you jump into the pool, it's initially cold and then your body adapts and you don't feel that temperature difference. Is the temperature any different? No, it's the same thing. You've adapted.

So what happens is we adapt to not feeling the contrast because there's no contrast. You're already at the top. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it totally makes sense. Yeah, so this is what people have to understand. And every week I get one or two patients call up and say, Doc, I just don't feel as good as I did in the beginning. Have you dropped in your functionality? No functionality no in fact i'm going to be

running a you know a marathon well were you able to do that last time no i'm not now i'm in the gym six days a week instead of once a week or once a month i said your entire lifestyle is updated but you're not feeling as good and i just can't get a full understanding their level of function is up here but they're telling me that they're not doing as well. Is it just because they're used to it? Is that what it is? Yeah. The massive improvement they had in the beginning was like this new state,

almost like getting water in your ear. Yeah, and then the water comes out. It's a contrast. Hormones always give the body a contrast between low level and higher level. Not excessive, but higher level. And you adapt to it. And you think it's, you know, what happens with heroin addicts? It's a bad example.

But the same thing. They get what's called tachyflaxis. They don't feel the same high. Everybody chases that first high. Right. And you're never going to have that first high. Because that was the first time that you just whacked all your neurons in your brain with this new drug no heroin yeah chasing the dragon chasing the dragon yeah well it makes

sense I mean when something is unique in the in the beginning and special and fantastic it gives you this Wow but then when that's a normal thing right then you go just you know what worked for me in the beginning and then it stopped working for me hasn't changed and then it stopped working for me. It hasn't changed. And you show them their blood levels. Their blood levels, like I had a,

in fact, it was, I think it was Jordan who was very, very low in testosterone. I think it was like a two when it should be a 14 and his total was like 220 and should be about 700. And he complains that he's not feeling as well.

We did his blood work and his free testosterone was like 14, 13.99. And his total was 801. So he's like four times above where he was before. And he's saying he doesn't feel any better. That's crazy. So he just got used to this elevated state. He's functioning at a higher level. You know, I've been on treatment.

That's what happens to rich people too, right? Is that right? Yeah, that's what they said. I haven't been there yet. I've used it. You start to crave different things, right? But the problem with that

is we lose focus and the clarity of the present moment. Right. That's the problem, man. You crave a different emotion when you need to be experiencing the emotion

that you're having right now. Living in that. Isn't that part of what the problem of being a fucking person is? Because we're always striving for the new thing. We're always striving for improvement. We always want a better time on our run. We always want a better this, a better that, the newest car, the fucking update to the house, all that shit.

We're constantly, no one is ever like, hey, it's pretty good. Isn't that apathy? I think it's chasing certain emotions and trying to run away from other ones when when there's there's opportunity for growth and development and ultimately contribution in all of them and and they're all they all can produce that if you're able to instead of run from it maybe look at it and see what that can provide you and And what can you do to provide that to somebody else? Yeah, it makes sense. It totally makes sense.

It just seems to me that the way you approach life and the philosophy that you have, that you take through life, can either contribute or take away from your happiness. And that it's all these things. It's not just the hormonal balance. It's not just the health of the physical body. But it's also the approach that you have to life, the way you look at things can sort of affect and balance all that stuff out in a way. I mean, you need everything.

You need the big picture. Absolutely. I think if you wrap your happiness around passion or pleasure, those are fleeting. You know what I mean? So if you can instead wrap it around purpose or meaning, then you're going to be a long-term happy. But pleasure, passion, things like that, that's your work term. People chasing pleasure, man, and that doesn't make you happy in the end. No.

You know, my friend Steve Ronell has a really funny way of he talks about things that are really fun when you're doing them and then things that are really fun after they're done. He's like, some things are really fun while you're doing them, but after they're done, they don't give you anything. Like a roller coaster. Right. Roller coaster doesn't give you anything after it's over. But, like, there's some miserable trips that you go on. Well, afterwards, you'll spend hours and hours laughing with your friends like, dude, that sucks so hard. Absolutely.

And you'll be laughing about how fucking cold you were and you're camping and you're freezing your dick off. Excuse me while I blow my nose. But, you know. Remembering a perceived negative time and putting a positive light on it. You know what I mean? Absolutely. It's also understanding that a lot of, like, what is good is very difficult to do, and it becomes your goal setting, and then achieving those goals becomes this feeling of pleasure and a good thing. Whereas opposed to so many people just want comfort and quiet and peace, but with none of the hard work.

And you don't appreciate it then. Absolutely. You're like a spoiled child like spoiled kids don't appreciate what they have in their life someone who works really hard and you know they've gone through hard times then when things turn well they're like god this is so good did not have to worry about money now to not have to worry about where my next meal's coming from to have a nice home and you and a nice bed to sleep in. If you look at the Richard Bransons and the Jobes and so forth, they came from nothing and

they built something. They worked. They were hungry and developed something or had a world that was fulfilled everything that they could think of. They had the desire to achieve that goal as opposed to people who are given everything on a silver platter. They don't have aspirations. They don't have the drive. Yeah. I think you achieve that goal. That is kind of that pleasure you're talking about, Joe. But like the, when we look back and look at the journey that it took from where you started to get to that goal, that's where you can feel purposeful and proud of it. That lasts longer than the feeling of accomplishing that goal, the journey. Yeah. It's what a weird world we live in, isn't it? You know, trying to manage all this stuff and trying to figure out what's the most,

what's the optimum way to get through life? What's the best way to approach it? How much emphasis to put on the mind? How much emphasis to put on the body? The relationships that you have with the people in your life greatly affect how you feel about life. I mean, the people in your life, they can affect your hormone levels. They can affect your cortisol levels. They can affect all those things, as he gave to his daughter.

Yeah. Having, you know, someone said that I talk a lot, and I tell them that because of having four women in the home, three daughters and the wife, that the opportunity that I talk a lot and I tell them that because of having four women in home three daughters and the wife that the opportunity that I have to speak is always outside because inside the house you know you just listen I just listen just trying to sort out these aliens that you live with and other especially I matched you I got three daughters you have to I got the same package yeah I also got two boys full house you got yeah yeah that's how we live like i said in feces urine and poop non-stop yeah but as they get older they mature into this delight as my daughter over there and

the other two daughters that aren't here just a delight and that journey you were talking about and the effect of the environment on your psychological well-being, you know, it's a roller coaster. laughing on some of the silly things that happen. And my daughter came to me a couple of weeks ago and basically, you know, said, yeah, we went through some silly time. Let's have some great time. And it was one of the most revelating kind of nights I could have had. It was the best night than going out and having a good, you know, 40-year-old scotch or something. But you owe me that. This last year, I read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and it just changed my outlook on everything. And he went through the Holocaust, and basically the book was a premise of some people survived the Holocaust and they—

Is that like the Holocaust? That's a Texan in me. The Holocaust. The Holocaust. Holocaust. Holocaust. Some people survived it, right, and were able to have meaning while others just gave up and died. And what was the reasoning behind that was kind of how the book looked at it.

And it was the people who survived, like 9%, the commonality was everybody had some kind of a meaning, right? Some kind of purpose outside of themselves that was wrapped in how they could better somebody else's life in some form or fashion. And that purpose, that meaning to their life allowed them to be able to endure whatever came their way because they had a purpose to endure it. The person that didn't have a meaning put on their life for whatever reason, just at the end, that was too much. They just gave in and said, I give up and eventually died. And that was the difference. You know what I mean? And we can replicate that in our own life. I mean, you can wrap your life around meaning and purpose and tie that to how you can contribute to put value into somebody else's

life. I found that puts value into you. You know what I mean? think the you know purpose of life is to live a life of purpose that's a very good way of putting it and it makes you feel better about your life too and like cynical people will say well there is no purpose in the end you know you're going to take a dirt nap and that's all the time that you have here is just bullshit but the reality is that bullshit is way better

when you believe that you have a purpose and when you live for a purpose and when you work hard and you achieve things like Goal-setting they say that one of the most important things for people to achieve happiness is the setting and achieving of goals It's setting and achieving of goals whether it's simple like completing a project I want to start a garden in my yard You know you want to put up posts and grow plants and and then when you eat a salad from those plants you go I fucking did it like You get a feeling, a natural feeling of accomplishment from an art project,

from anything you want to do, fixing the shed, whatever it is. When you set a goal and you do your best and you achieve, that's part of what made human beings what we are today in 2015. Those natural reward systems are in our DNA, and if you follow those and you live by those, you will have a more fulfilled life, a happier life. I agree. I agree. And it's a fulfillment. It's a joy that you get that you don't need anybody else to say to you, good job.

Because it's self-generated. It's your own self-reward as opposed to people who search for, you know, other ones, someone else to tap them on the back. You know, people come up to me and, you know, I'm very sensitive about the fact that people say, what a great job I'm doing and whatever I'm doing. I know I'm doing a good job because that's my purpose. That's my purpose. I don't need to have someone to tell me to, you know, I've been doing a good job. You're not a slacker. Like if you weren't doing your best, you'd be going against yourself, right? Correct, right.

So you don't need anybody. I'm very hypercritical about myself because, you know, you look around the planet. How many people are putting in the effort for helping other people? Right. I mean, really, truly helping without, you know, helping. Not that I do 100% because I'm selfish. I need to have my yeah my scotch and my car and whatever else trying to improve well-being right improve well-being

across the board yeah it's there's really no good manual on how to live life and even if there was it might not apply to you you know i mean nobody could tell you like what's going to make one person happy it's not necessarily going to make another person happy. You know, we're here talking about goal setting and working hard and trying. For some people, that's actually not it. For some people, what do they want to do? They just want to have a good group of friends and be around them and have nice meals and good conversations. And that's it.

They literally don't have a desire for these other things but for people like you that have this burning desire to to know things and improve upon things and to do good work for you that's that's your path that's it i think simple is get so wrapped up in the day-to-day rat race of life that they don't put their head up and say man i i'm totally missing the boat, man. There is no meaning. There is no purpose to how I'm doing anything. I would think people really thought about it.

They might not do what Joe Rogan wants to do or Mark Gordon wants to do, but they're going to like, hey, I want to do something. If it's not just tied around totally doing, you know, I just want to hang out and not give anything out to anybody, you're not going to get anything in return. I don't think anybody wants to do that in their right mind. It's just so hard for people to find out what it is that they want to do and then how do I go about pursuing that and how do I go about pursuing that while avoiding the idea of choosing just a job

that's going to give you security, a job that you don't want to do, but, hey, it's going to give me dental. That's a big factor in a lot of people's lives. The non- pursuing of dreams. Somehow these dreams are dangerous. You've got to go after it with no fear of failure. Don't even let failure

enter into the equation. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail at it? That's what I would tell people to do. That's what I tell my kids. Whatever you're passionate about, that's where you need to start. You know what I mean? That's where you need to go. Not because of a dental program. You're going to have failure. Absolutely. But failure is important for growth and learning. You know,

I have it all the time. It's good. It's like a vitamin. You've got to take it. Fuel yourself with the fuck-ups. That's what I always say. Talking about failure, one of the stories I keep on repeating and using as a goal for myself is there was a pup reporter that interviewed Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, before he passed away. And he said to him, you know, Mr. Edison, your development of the incandescent bulb was what revolutionized, took us from the Stone Ages to modern living.

And, you know, but how do you feel about these over 1,108 failures that you had with the bulbs? And Thomas Edison says, well, Sonny, I don't look at them as being failures, just as things that didn't work. And it's by having that attitude of looking at what we do in our daily life as not failures, meaning that you're worthless and you're incapable and therefore you should stop what you're doing but look at it's just something that didn't work find another pathway that's a great thomas edison impression by the way oh thank you very much he's a southerner when did he become from alabama where was he well sunny ohio where's well not only that he ripped off tesla i mean that was really how he got ahead. That guy was just ripping off Tesla. He hated alternate current. Yeah, electrocuting fucking elephants and shit.

DC. Remember that? He electrocuted that elephant. Yeah, it was all about direct current. Yeah, he fucked up. That guy's a dumbass. He was just lucky there was a super genius around that he could steal from. Well, I'm sure he was smart.

Don't get me wrong. But he kind of helped being around Tesla. I mean, that's that Michael Jordan commercial, you know, like about how many times he failed. He failed over and over and over again, and that's why he succeeded. Yeah, like you said, man, that spurs growth. You know, you have to be able to fail. I look at it as data. You know what I mean?

That gives me readings about where I was and how I need to self-correct the course I'm at. Without it, you can't get a good true measurement. And that feeling that you get from failure is awesome. It sucks at the time, but it's like the, like we were talking about things that are fun while you're doing them. And then things that are great years later, when you fail at something, that feeling that you have afterwards is fucking horrible, but that feeling will fuel you that feeling will get you to avoid that certain that's what it's there for but you have to rearrange the way you look at it people look at it like oh i'm a failure you can't define yourself by mistakes you what you who you are is you are the thinking thing you are the thing that can figure out what

the problem is how to how to form a solution you're not the results like you You are the thing that can figure out what the problem is, how to form a solution. You're not the results. You're not the failures. And that's what a lot of people run into. They define themselves by failures. And people try to define you by failures. How many times you run into someone from high school, remember that time when you were in high school, you did this and that? Like, hey, dickhead, that was 20 years ago. You're still living there. I learned from that and I moved past it. That happens with a lot of people, right? That people will try to drag you into.

Like, I had a friend of mine who, he had to get a, he had to break up with this girl because he was dating her. And they would talk about things. They would have a disagreement about something that she did. And she would bring up something that happened like fucking two years ago that had nothing to do with it. Like, you did that. You did that. And then you then you said that he's like it was two fucking years ago What are you talking about? That's no bearing on who we are right now none zero. She's not being rational You can't she was trying to define him by an argument that they had you know two years ago They're trying to define you know, two years ago. I can't comment. But you know what I mean? I know what you mean. But when people are doing that, they're trying to define someone based on a failure.

As a team guy, man, anybody, the guy I want on my team is a guy who's failed and failed and failed. And every time he got back up and he said, I don't give a shit. I'm going to keep going. Because I know when both start flying and the day gets tough, we're going to keep moving. Show me somebody who's never failed, ours won every time.

And as soon as they have a perceived adversity or difficult situation, they don't know how to act. I don't want that guy on my team, especially when it's life and death. You know what I mean? That's a big issue with fighters. Yeah. With fighters, it's a giant issue. It's called being a frontrunner.

And there's some guys that just don't do well when they they're the nail they're great when they're the hammer but when all of a sudden they're the nail they don't know what the fuck to do and they fall apart there's certain guys that if they're dominating a fight they're the most terrifying fighter in the world but the moment things start going their way you start seeing cracks in their armor you start seeing mental weaknesses and they fold and they perform at a drastically reduced level. With no reason. Well, the reason is psychological. All of a sudden, they're confronting adversity. They don't know what to do. When you see a fighter that's capable of being hurt and on the brink of failure

and then coming back and winning a fight, then you see a person with character. And then there's other people that they're great when everything's going their way, but the moment things aren't going their way, they just fucking pack up their bag and go home. Yep. That's what I love to watch, is the guy, those fights where the guy was down and he didn't stop.

You know what I mean? You learn a lot about guys. Yeah, you learn about, you said it, Joe, their character. That's where you learn about somebody's character. There's this kid that fights in the UFC right now. His name's Thomas Almeida. He's a very, very, very highly hyped up fighter.

And he had a real tough fight recently with this guy named Brad Pickett. Brad Pickett's a tough veteran. He's been around for a long time. This kid, Almeida, has been beating everybody up. And then all of a sudden he gets in this fight with this veteran and he gets cracked. His nose gets broken. He gets rocked really hard. Came back the next round and knocked Pickett out.

Hit him with a flying knee and knocked him out. But the point being that this kid got pushed to the brink, never lost composure, and then you go, okay, the hype's real. This kid's the real deal. And you've got to see that. You've got to see that to know. Because otherwise you don't know what happens when they get in trouble. Absolutely.

You know, getting in trouble, like being able to operate while under that kind of intense pressure of being in trouble is what makes champions. Hey, how do you replicate that in the fight world and training for a guy to be able to be in that situation where, hey, this is what it's going to feel like, and this

is how you need to respond, or can you replicate that? You almost can't. I mean, I think that kind of mental training, it's so difficult to try to replicate that. There's certain drills you can do, like you do a drill where you take five fresh guys and you go in and you spar one guy for one round and then that guy goes out and you bring a new fresh guy and you're tired and that guy's free and they try to break you. But there's also people that don't agree with that because they think that that kind of like experiencing failure like that in the gym is actually a bad thing because then you become

comfortable with failure and you understand it. And some people think that it's just an attribute, that's a psychological attribute. Either you're in shape and you're prepared and you're ready. And when adversity comes, you're going to be able to handle it or you're not. You know, it's really tough to put an answer to that because it's really tough. Like think about like Bud's training or think about like how many people go through that kind of training and just get to the point where everybody's uncomfortable, everybody's miserable, but they get up and they quit. And who doesn't quit? The people that don't quit are the people that you're going to count on.

Right. Why? Why? This is their first time doing that. Because they made the and they quit. And who doesn't quit? The people that don't quit are the people that you're going to count on. Right. Like what, why, why this is their first time doing this. Cause they made the decision. Right. Beforehand. I can tell you,

they made the decision beforehand. Like I don't care what happens and how much it's going to suck in my mind. I've now embraced it. And I've told myself that I'm going to enjoy it. And no matter what, I'm not quitting. I'll lose a leg before I quit. But if you have even the slightest inkling of this sucks,

I can't believe I have to do another 20 miles and hump 100 pounds, then you're thinking, hmm, it's easy to step off to the side over there and be done. But if you have a mental mind frame, and you can train it, if you have that mental mind frame of I will not, they might not take me, but it won't be because I didn't finish this damn thing. It won't be because I'm not physically and mentally here doing everything that's asked of me. Well, when you say you can train it, they don't try to train it in you, though, before they prepare you for it. No, absolutely not.

They want the person who does it on their own. Innate. I think it's the same with fighters. I really do. Either you have it or you don't. Yeah, and that's why, similarly, there's just a small percentage of people that ever get through that kind of training. There's similarly a small percentage of people that ever get to the elite level of competition, I think, in any form, in any sport, in anything where you're trying to push yourself. Anything that's difficult, any really difficult endeavor reveals character.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful process It is it's amazing It's and it's amazing to see in yourself and even you know the people that experience or they that quit If they even that can be a lesson, you know You can learn from that lesson and then rebuild and never never experience that again And a curiosity in your training what percentage of people actually complete the training? So through our initial special forces assessment and selection, only about 33% get through that. Then you go through the training pipeline, which is anywhere from about a year and

a half to two, two and a half years. And that's about 50% of the people, I think, you know. So you end up with 16% who get through. Yeah, it's a very small percentage. And that's people that have the courage to join. Right. So, you know, you think about how many people are willing to sign up. I mean, that's a small percentage, too. So a small percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage. Everybody wants to be a cool guy until things go wrong.

Oh, yeah, man. Nobody wants to be a cool guy anymore. Do you know what it is with the SEALs in San Diego? It's very similar. Similar to it. Yeah. It's got to Yeah. It's gotta be. It's all a very, very small percentage. So the question is, if it's

16% in that arena, what is it in boxing or in MMA or in fighting? Well, in MMA there's also, there's a lot of physical gifts that come into play. Like we were talking about guys that quit. There's guys that quit that are at the elite level.

They just don't run into anybody as good as them. And as long as they keep training, they keep pushing ahead, they'll bulldoze and bum rush all these guys that are in there with them. But there's guys, you know, I don't want to mention names. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. There's guys who've won world titles that are quitters. Yeah. It's a fact.

Really? They're just really good. Or they've been cheating. It's been a lot of? They're just really good. Or they've been cheating. It's been a lot of steroid use. EPO, a lot of different things. But even then, they have to fine-tune those skills. I mean, anybody can do those drugs, and they can't hit a home run. Or they can't put somebody in a rear-naked joke.

They're not entirely weak. Right. See, you know, they might, like, some people can run a marathon. Can they run an ultra-marathon? Can they do 100 miles in 24 hours? A like some people can run a marathon can they run an ultra marathon can they do 100 miles in 24 hours a lot of people can't but some people can so the people that run that ultra marathon they'll look at other people that can't run a marathon or the people that run a regular marathon will look at people that can't run a marathon that'll quit at mile 16 or whatever and they'll go well you just fucking don't have the mental toughness maybe they don't have the mental toughness to go 100

miles you know there's levels to everything in this life and there's people that are at the elite level of MMA that I know I know that if they get in a bad spot they're going to quit they're going to fold up shop everybody has a breaking point I can tell you that for a fact every human has

a breaking point so there's no unbreakable dude walking around today no even though he might think so yeah a lot of people think so and a lot of people think so without ever being tested and i don't even think they think it i think they're just saying it so that they think that they can convince you and maybe somehow or another it'll convince themselves if you believe it yeah yeah you know is it nurture is it nature is it just that's a good question what they want to do is it a psychological decision to is it nurture is it nature is it just a good question what they want to do is it a psychological decision to do it or is it their matrix of how they're put together it's a

very good question this is the limit of their capacity i had this puppy and this is obviously a dog and not a person but i had this dog his name was frank sinatra it's the craziest fucking dog i've ever had it was nuts his mother was a wild boar hunting dog from Hawaii. His dog was fucking crazy. He was crazy. But when he was a puppy, one of the reasons I realized he was crazy was he would always like to play bite and stuff. He was really little. He was only two months old.

He would come up to me and bite my hands, and I'd push him away. And he'd run up and bite my hand again, and I'd push him away. And I'm like, how many fucking times can I do this? I pushed him away 80 times before i got tired of doing it i go one i push two three four i'm a fucking human okay i'm a grown man and he's a baby dog and i'm pushing him away from me and he never got discouraged not once at number 80 I'm like alright buddy bite my hand Let's just let's just call this a loss, but like that was a hundred percent nature This is not nurture and taught this dog that all I've taught him to do is you know get pet and give him dog food

Give him kisses, but in his hitting his makeup And there's that that question of epigenetics like what how much of your character do you get from your parents like just in your dna how much can you mold on your own i mean i think there are there's an untold number of variables and nature and nurture it's neither or it's all the above yeah absolutely environment there's so many different things that are so you know you can't really put these people down for not being able to succeed at the level that you've. Like the analogy

you did with the super marathon or the marathon of the person who does like I do, a 5K and I'm wasted. I'm not a runner. I'm a swimmer. But if you decided you were a runner and then put in the work, you would be a runner. Given any, you know, I mean, whether your knees hold up or ankle problems or all that

jazz, if you decided to, you can do it. It's not outside the realm of possibility. It's not like you can't fly. Well, I can't fly either. You know, I don't have wings. You know what I mean? Like, we're talking about non-physical limitations. It's a simple thing like running.

Not saying, well, you beat Usain Bolt in a 100-yard dash. No, you won't. You know? But we're talking about some simple stuff. Making the commitment to do it and keeping it. It's a commitment and you have the physical and mental capacity and it's just whether you're going to be committed or not. And whether or not you're going to embrace the suck.

I've been committed before. That's the difference, Joe. Instead of turning from whatever you're doing, embrace it, man. You have to truly embrace it. You've got to embrace the suck. Then it's not something that you're trying to get out of. You're trying to live in that moment and truly thrive in it. And that's the difference between the elite performer and the non-elite. Yeah, I mean, even like simple things.

Like tell yourself you're going to do an hour and a half on an elliptical machine. Well, it seems real easy for five minutes. And then ten minutes in, you're like, fuck, I i got an hour and 20 more minutes this bullshit and then you know as you're going you know and not reduce the level keep the level at the same and just force yourself to do it that's not easy to do but that ain't shit compared to an ultra marathon so there's levels to everything and then how about these crazy fucks that do like there's there's people that do two ultra marathons in a row like they'll do an ultra marathon and they'll do an ultra marathon back because a regular ultra marathon is not fucking

crazy enough for these people because they they want to find the edge what when's the edge i hit it nope i think i can go further i i think i'm building up more endurance i think i'm building all more mental toughness i can go further have you ever heard of winhoff i've heard that what is the ice man yes that crazy fucking that guy ran a marathon in the uh in in the desert without drinking water yeah he goes and does his crazy submersions and and like freezing temperatures and he can keep uh his core temperature without changing he holds a world record like two hours yeah So he's saying that he's come up with a method that he can teach you how to change your physiology to be able to adapt to these things. And it's with breathing techniques, commitment, and cold water immersion.

He's a fucking alien, that guy. I bought his thing the other day, and me and Becky did the breathing thing, my wife. And the first day I did it, I held my breath for 2 minutes and 41 seconds. My wife held it for 2 minutes and 30 seconds after 15 minutes doing this breathing stuff. And you held it for 5 minutes before reading his. Well, no. Well, that guy summited Everest. 2 minutes and 41 seconds.

Yeah, in shorts. In shorts. In shorts and no shirt. Yeah. Summited Everest in shorts. He took 26 people up to Kilimanjaro. They summited it, and they all had cancers or ailments or whatever. Trained them for three months. 16 of them summited it.

They did it in 20, 36 hours, and they did it in shorts. You know what I mean? His whole thing is, I can train you to take over your physiology and your autatomic nervous system. Well, a guy like that, see, you know, like people talk about mental training. Like I had Cowboy Cerrone on the other day and I asked him if he's involved in it. You know, he's talking about like mind fucks and things that go wrong

in fights. I'm like, have you ever done any mental training at all? And he's like, never fucked with any of that stuff. But I think you get a guy who's as tough as like a Cowboy Cerrone and you teach him some shit like this. Absolutely. It's all next level. This is the elite of the elite. You know what I mean? So if you can get

your physical performance up to the top level, then you're selling yourself short if you're not also having a mental aspect to your game. You have to have a mental aspect to your game. You have to be mentally training. I think also, like, people get used to shit. You get used to stuff also like people get used to shit you get

used to stuff and you get used to stuff like where it's not that bad anymore like you know i do this uh have you done the cryotherapy yet have you done any of that no what are you doing after this you want to go do it 270 degrees below zero for three minutes it's fucking awesome my mom did it she said it was amazing amazing you get out of there you feel like a fucking werewolf like you're gonna run through buildings oh sign, sign me up. The point is, though, like I do it so often, it's nothing. But the first time I did it, I was like, holy shit. Now I do it, I just stand there.

Like I literally like the timer goes off at three minutes. I'm like, I can keep going. I can just keep going. My body is so normal to me, I get used to it. I wonder if that's what's going on with this Wim Hof guy too. It's like his mind has a category for these states. And he puts himself in these states and he can slowly but surely increase the duration of these states. And the suffering in his body understands how to mitigate whatever issues might come up from it. He's got a documentary on vice, Joe.

Check it out. It's about 39, 40 minutes long. Yeah, I keep hearing about it. I, and I haven't looked into it enough. I watched it so much. I bought, I bought the programs like a 10 week,

uh, program for 200 bucks. I was like, I'm getting it. That's awesome. I want to do that. Yeah. I need to get that guy in here.

Yeah. Yeah. Those people that are like that, those outliers, those real outliers, those people that like, like I said, when you talk about doing an ultra marathon or something along those lines,

like for most people, like, God, that's the amount of mental toughness is involved in that is insane and then you hear about this guy and you're like well fuck well there's always going to be someone who's taking it to the next place next guy's going to do it fucking barefoot you know i mean it's just he's cool because he hooks up with scientists and they regulate everything they take the blood before and during after he's hooked up to the machine so he's like he can prove uh now it's you know it's proven evidence proven that what he's doing you know that's that's what's really cool about it that's from being different from some like some religious kook or whatever to hey this is how i'm doing it this is why this is how i'm affecting my autotomic nervous system and now i got the science back it

up right so a lot of people they look at that and they think of it as like walking on coals, which is really just kind of a horseshit trick. You just walk fast and your foot gets fucked up, but you're fine. You know, whereas this guy, I love that too, that he has brought in scientists to make sure, like, there's zero fuckery involved here. This is a guy that really understands how to regulate his body temperature and his breathing, and it's pretty amazing. No false hope, but that's exactly what we're to regulate his body temperature and his breathing. It's pretty amazing.

No false hope. But that's exactly what we're doing with Dr. Gordon and the foundation. Hey, there's no false hope here. You know what I mean? So what he's doing, what I love about him, he's like, hey, no false hope. What we're putting out to the guys out here, if you're listening, there's no false hope in Dr. Gordon's program and through the Warrior Angels Foundation. It's all science evidence based. through the Warrior Angels Foundation. It's all science evidence-based, and we've set up a system that's so advanced that you don't even have to go to a doctor's office to be able to see Dr. Gordon.

Everything is paperless, done through Skype, so we've got personalized, individualized methods for medicine to see one of the world's most renowned people to treat traumatic brain injuries. We're now bringing that to every veteran that signs up to our program. Dude, you brought the whole thing full circle. I like how you did that. Yeah. You've been doing media.

Yeah. You know what you're doing. You know how to bring it back. Now, the Warrior Angels Foundation, what does anybody have to do if they want to get involved in this? Like, say someone's listening to this and they say, you know, they're thinking to themselves, this applies to me. Right.

Like, I know this could help me. Right. I know this could help me. I know I have this issue. All you got to do is go to our website, go to our treatment page, and start filling in your information. And the website is Warrior Angel Foundation. Warrior Angels with the S, WarriorAngelsFoundation.org. So you go through, you fill out your initial information, then you get started in our automated process.

You'll get Dr. Gordon's patient intake form, you know, the long one, and you'll fill that out, get it back to us through email. Never have to print out anything. No printing, no nothing, man. It's all digitalized, all done through the cloud. So we get all that information. Once we get all your information in, Dr. Gordon and his office check it. They make sure you're a good candidate. Once that's been decided, we'll go ahead and we'll start funding you. And when we make the funds go through, you'll get your blood test. We'll send, we have access labs in Florida. All right. So they'll do your labs. So they send the labs to you, to wherever you're at, and they will make plans for you to go to a lab that's the closest to your

geographical location. So that's the only time you're going to have to leave your house to do this thing. So you'll go to leave your house, go get your lab drawn. They'll take it. They'll take the labs. They'll send that back to Florida. Florida will get it. They'll analyze the results. They'll send the results to Dr. Gordon.

Dr. Gordon gets it. He gets the results. They schedule an appointment with you to do a one-on-one consultation, and he'll go over everything in complete detail and answer all your questions there and then go over what he thinks your protocols should be. Yeah, before we actually do a Skype, I write a four-page report, which gets sent by email to the patient, and it has English in it, not just medicalese, and it explains some of the results,

English in it, not just medicalese, and it explains some of the results and it gives them a chart of what the suggested first group of products or the first approach will be. Then through FedEx we send a very comprehensive patient handbook that's put together specifically based upon their lab results. It's about 80 pages in total and explains why we did every single one of the tests and how they interpret out and then supportive documentation from the general medical literature that's out there. And then through the Skype, which is 45 minutes to an hour, we go through every single one of the lab tests and how it pertains to them after we, you know, discuss their traumas

or whatever, their accidents that they had, or if they're a civilian, the lack of any accident, but here's what your results are. And then we make arrangements for either their doctor to participate with us or one of our doctors, you know, since November 12th, when I saw you last year, my new book on traumatic brain injury came out and a new lecture series came out and we did that in San Diego. And part of the reason why there are now more doctors aware of what we do is because we trained 45 docs from five different countries in the protocols that we've developed over the past 10 years and the results. Andrew was there and spoke to them. We had a night, a Friday night,

which was for a military night, since we were so close to Coronado Island, and invited the military, anyone active or presently a veteran to come to the meeting and to hear Andrew talk about his own life's experience. You know, I can be the egghead and tell you about the science that's behind it, but what's really impacting on both the psychological, emotional level is listening to someone as you did to Matthew Gosney when he was on the show, and Andrew telling his story of how he transitioned from this phenomenal life to this great military life, to then the injuries, and then what happened after it, and then having all these standardized medical procedures done, which really didn't help to bring him to the level that he's at right now, which is according to his mother, father, sister, brother. Your dog also said that you were acting much better than you were in the past ever.

Yeah. Right. And his life is transition. The emails he sends you about, you know, the quality that he's experiencing. That's what it's about. Regardless of what we do, it's always about, unfortunately, the endpoint of the journey that we're taking right now is that bringing you back to a functionality where you're enjoying life. How's your life? Yeah, couldn't be any better. Couldn't be any better. And that's what we're saying, hey, we want to bring this to everybody out there who's

been told, like I was told, this is the new you. Take a notebook around with you because you're going to have to write stuff down because you're not going to be able to remember it. And here's an important thing. There's a donate link, and the donate link at warriorangelsfoundation.org. The donate link is really important because there's a lot of guys that just don't have the funds. They don't have funds for this kind of treatment, and's not covered by insurance companies correct i mean is any insurance covering this no what happened um let's see how matthew gosny got in is i take a uh a percentage of my practice and put it into a separate fund and that's how i think uh started funding the

military is through our practice because it's you know for a year the first year it's $5,000 all-inclusive everything because we've gotten donations from our laboratory the laboratory that we use access medical lab has given us a lot of money to help offset the cost for the labs our compounding pharmacy University compounding pharmacy, University Compounding Pharmacy, gave us a $100,000 grant so that testosterone is for free. Any of the compounding products are free. Another pharmacy, Ike's Pharmacy, gives us all our Clomid

so that the first three months of product for the less than 40-year-old veterans, they get Clomid, which helps stimulate their own body to make testosterone. We just got a $10,000 grant from Pure Encapsulations for the key antioxidants that we use for brain health. A lot of help streamlining those costs. But get this, Joe, the $5,000 in year one is compared to what the VA spends, which is $15,000 in the Congressional Budget Office report in 2012 for TBI and PTSD, $15,000 to $16,000 to treat that. And all they use is medication and psychotherapy. So it gets more as the years goes on, whereas we're fixing the underlying condition. We're fixing the problem. $5,000 for the first year, about $3,500, $2,535 the second year, and then every year thereafter, the cost is about $1,500. The same COB, was it? They had $66 billion is what

they're paying for all the medical care in 2012, $66 billion. That's why we're getting listened to because we're like, look at the difference and variations of these prices of what you guys are spending and the end result don't but nobody cared about the end result they cared about numbers isn't that crazy yeah and let me just tell anybody who's listening um if i may my daughter uh has a jewelry company and she's volunteered to gift to anyone who gives $5,000 a coin, which is 1,800 years of age, silver coin from Rome. All authentic. They look brand new coins. As a gift to anyone who helps us with $5,000. Era Coins or Era, if I can say her website?

Sure. Okay. $10,000 era coins or era if I can say her website sure okay? It's er a by Rg.com and on there you'll see giving and actually shows what she's producing in her jewelry company and donating to Warrior Angel Foundation so that they can hand it out to people who are Donating money now is there any resistance to this this this type of training? Is there any detractors? Training in the sense of- Not training, treatment rather.

No. In fact, everything is FDA approved. Everything is being used at physiological levels. I think I shared with you on past show that we use a blended testosterone injectable that we developed about 14 years ago, which gets into the brain a lot faster than the cipionate and the enanthate that's out there, different types of testosterone. And we use a very low dose, 40 milligrams, which is the amount that a healthy 25 to 35-year-old makes in a week's time.

So we're using everything physiologic. And it's not just about hormone replenishment. It's about the micronutrients that we are using to help with the hormones so that they work. I mean, you need to have a well-balanced machinery in the brain in order to get all the benefits. And no one is addressing the inflammatory aspect of brain trauma. And without addressing that, you can't get improvement. Now, I know there's...

Sustained improvement. They're developing new testosterone that's animal-based. Instead of using yams, they're using animals somehow or another. And they're avoiding detection with all these drug testing when they're doing these carbon isotope tests right this is like the new yeah this is the new thing that that uh the people on the fringe of the cheating movement yeah well if you can get the testosterone more so into the brain because where does testosterone really work yeah it does work to help build muscle but what controls the muscle?

It's the brain. We were just talking about how people succeed in freezing and Iceman and Kilimanjaro. It's all the brain. So if you can increase the brain's ability to be resistant to failure, meaning that you've got a mindset, you're going to do it. Regardless of hell or high water, you're going to do it. That's really where the benefits are. And testosterone increases those benefits. Correct.

And low-dose, very well-absorbable, like testosterone propionate gets into the system, into the cells in three to four hours, and it's out of the blood. So you don't detect it. Propionate. What about that? Do you develop drops, liposomals? Yeah, nanoliposome. It's a compounded product. We developed the vehicle that the compounding pharmacies can legally put the testosterone into this liquid. And the liquid's put under the tongue or put into the mouth and washed around and gets absorbed because the particle size is so small it gets absorbed rapidly.

But this is a different one. This is something you have to do every day, right? This is one that, yeah, our testing showed that either once a day, ideally once a day is the best, but you get to regulate the responsiveness that you have, the response. So if you want to have a nice, easy day, take one squirt on the tongue. If you want to have a really energetic day, you take two. If you want to have a fun night for many hours, you take four squirts.

That sounds like you're encouraging people to get fucking crazy. That's what I'm hearing. Hey, I educate everybody. It's prescription only, and with all the great doctors out there, they'll regulate it. And it's not a magic pill,

but what it'll do is it'll allow you to live life the way it was intended to be. You know what I mean? So before, if you couldn't react to something, now you'll be able to react to things appropriately. You'll be able to do things appropriately. Whereas if your neurochemistry is not in balance, then you can't. So this will give you the opportunity to do that so uh in closing is anything else you guys want to say warriorangelsfoundation.org is where you can go to learn more about this we got a crowdfunding campaign that you can get to through our website um we got awesome perks on there uh like a range day with me uh shooting at the range you got videos on there for that,

cool mugs or whatever. So some incentives to give and anything you want to find out about Dr. Gordon or also his daughter will be on our website as well. I will say that Life Extension Magazine that in 2012 did the article on hormones to heal the brain the Military, is doing a follow-up article where they've gone to six or eight of our patients, four, I think, military and two or four non-military, and interviewed them to get their experience over the past few years since the 2012 article. And I think it'll be important for those people who are thinking about maybe getting involved in what we're doing to read that. I think it's coming out the end of the year. To read it and listen to the experience, or else go back to the Matthew Gosney, Jason Hall, November 12th of last year, and listen to the podcast that was done, because I get a lot of calls of how many people, exactly what he said was what I'm going through.

because I get a lot of calls of how many people, exactly what he said was what I'm going through. And I think listening to those that are interested and get onto the program, more important than anything I can say. And also, Joe, because we're on here today, lives will be changed, man. It's probably hard to comprehend that. But thank you for this opportunity

because it's going to have a ripple effect that you probably aren't going to be able to understand. But by being on here, things are going to affect people's lives in a positive, positive way. Thank you. That's what I hope. And thank you. Thank you for starting this foundation. Thank you for being so active with it, Dr. Gordon. I mean, this is all amazing stuff. And whenever you hear about people getting help like this and how effective it is. It's just, this is a beautiful thing. This is really awesome. All right, folks.

So warrior angels, foundation.org, go there, uh, check out the crowd fund, uh, link, uh,

check out the donate button and, uh, become a part of this folks. You can help. All right. Thank you everybody. That's it for this week. We'll see you soon.

Bye. Bye. Thanks.