Downloaded from YTS.MX
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Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
(thunder rumbling)
(dramatic music)
(explosion booms)
- [Joe] The average blast wave
travels at 163 miles per hour.
- Whoa! - Jesus.
- [Man] That's a great picture.
- You gotta see this video, folks.
The people that are just listening to the podcast,
you gotta see the impact of these blasts.
It's so goddamn important.
- Absolutely, people have to understand
that if you've had traumatic brain injury
anticipate within one year's time,
total change in the person, total change.
They're no longer the person that you anticipated.
How long did it take you for that transition?
- I started first having symptoms
like six months after I got home.
You know what I mean?
So that's the difficult part.
Like you're not missing a limb, so you don't think anything
like we were rocking and rolling.
Come back, good to go.
Happy to be alive.
Let's get ready for the next one.
And then boom, stuff starts happening,
and it's like, oh my gosh, what's going on?
- 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 the muscles.
- [Mark] 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.
- TBI is so pervasive.
Under 45 years of age, the most common cause
of significant morbidity or disability
is because of traumatic brain injury.
- So it's estimated that there are two million
new brain injuries every year in the United States.
So if you just look over the last 40 years,
with the people walking around the planet,
that means there's 80 million people
who have traumatic brain injury.
(people chattering)
You're not stuck with the brain you have.
You can make it better.
You just have to do the right things for it.
The smartest people are gonna look at healing the brain
on many different fronts,
but clearly hormones are a huge, important part of it.
(dramatic music)
- In 2009, I found a purpose helping veterans.
Having read the articles,
and listened to the news about how poorly our veterans,
when they came home, were being treated.
Who are coming home and committing suicide
at 156 a week, or one every 36 hours in Montana.
And in fact, in 2012, the DOD commented
there were 412,000 veterans who had PTS.
And then a year later, there was 382 who had TBI,
and then you think of the millions of veterans
that are incarcerated.
230,000 females incarcerated.
And you look at the military psych reports
that came out talking about
now, what seems to be the reason why these guys
and gals get into trouble?
It's mood, it's anger, it's anger management.
- 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?
- 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 come in with these natural products
that have no patents on it, that you can walk into a GNC.
You can get it from on it,
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.
- Meeting Andrew Marr in 2014
was when the focus of what I really wanted
to spend the rest of my days doing
was on helping those that had protected us.
- [Woody] Andrew came home one day and he said,
"Hey, I've decided to join the army."
It sent his mother and I into just total panic.
- As a mom, when I first found out
that he was headed to Afghanistan,
and all that's going on?
You know, your first thought is,
you know, please live.
- Different day, same song and dance.
Fuckin', this shit is crazy.
I got to basic training.
I had a map for what they wanted.
- One. - Pull!
(explosion booms)
- [Soldier] Yeah!
Fuck you!
- My job is creating explosive charges
to put on doors, windows, walls.
Improvised explosive device, IEDs.
(explosion booms)
So, there was a specific event.
We had some information
on a mid level facilitator for the Taliban.
We get to the location, we had just missed them.
So we're sweeping through the house,
and we find this one specific room
is rigged with explosives.
It is a booby trap.
About that time, the enemy started kind of an ambush on us.
(gunfire rattling)
They were just trying to hit close enough
to us to get that weapons cache, to make us all blow up.
The only tactically feasible thing
was to detonate the charge.
We pull the charge.
We blew the explosives, you know, it knocked most of us out
but we were able to get
out of there without any US or Afghani casualties.
(helicopter whirring)
One of our vehicles hit an IED,
and it shot this 42,000 pound vehicle
20 feet up in the air.
And I saw it, it was like slow motion.
And I saw it go up,
and as soon as it hit, I knew what was going on.
And everybody in that vehicle was wounded.
In order to see these guys through,
to get the rest of this team back alive,
I'm gonna forgo going home, and stay here,
and make sure we bring everybody else back.
- When Andrew called and said he wasn't gonna make it home
for the birth of our son,
he explained to me that they needed him,
and I supported his decision to stay
and make sure everyone was safe.
- 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.
Or the repetitive gunfire that you had,
or the breaching that you--
- And how many licks does it take
to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?
It's different for everybody.
- Pregnenolone has been found to control
the anxiety affecting his body.
- What is pregnenolone?
- With low pregnenolone, it can lead to all the hormones
that help to regulate our brain function, and our life.
- So, I'm reading an article out of Turkey
talking about pugilists, boxers,
and it turned out that they had a very high occurrence
of growth hormone deficiency.
And that became my epiphany aha article.
Wow, trauma leads to hormonal deficiency,
and they're talking about growth hormone.
What about other hormones
like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone,
thyroid, cortisol?
And I started looking through the literature.
PubMed, National Institute of Health, and so forth,
and there were articles supporting it.
There weren't a lot, but that was 2004.
And it seems almost because I had opened
this new Pandora's box for myself,
that more articles started appearing
again and again, year after year,
and just the quantum amount of literature
that I was reading.
- They have more issues than us football players,
because when you're dealing with those blasts,
and what they've gone through, and that trauma,
and what they did with war.
It's amazing, they're number one.
And my attitude is, to all my government officials,
it's appalling how we treat our veterans coming back.
You developed a system to send them out
to protect our sovereignty,
but you gotta have a system
of bringing them back into our society.
A lot of people don't have a clue
what these guys go through.
And it's something like
over 20 veterans a day commit suicide.
When I heard those numbers, that was staggering to me.
That's uncalled for,
and if I'm offending someone, so be it.
(crowd cheering)
- [Announcer] He springs the ball out to Davis,
running for the flag, touchdown, Anthony Davis.
But he has certainly aroused the stadium.
It's absolutely amazing what a team can do
with a couple of turns left.
- The brain is the most important organ in the universe.
It's really complicated.
It's got a hundred billion nerve cells,
and each nerve cell is connected to other nerve cells
by up to 10,000 connections.
You have more connections in your brain
than there are stars in the universe.
And if you take a piece of brain tissue,
the size of a grain of sand,
it has 100,000 neurons, nerve cells,
and a billion connections
all talking to one another.
Your brain is soft, about the consistency of soft butter
and it's housed in a very hard skull
that has sharp bony ridges.
So take this soft, complicated,
spectacular organ in this hard skull.
You don't want to hit it against things.
It's just not smart.
- I flourished in football,
and flourished in baseball.
At that age, I realized
that I was a top athlete at 17 in two sports.
Scholarship offers, and I was drafted professionally.
- So I first saw Anthony Davis,
and I was so excited to see him,
because I grew up here in Southern California,
and he was the Notre Dame killer.
He was the runner up to the Heisman Trophy.
He's really well known.
- [Anthony] We were down 24 to six.
- [Announcer] High and deep,
and Davis two yards deep in the end zone.
- [Anthony] We were gonna win 55 to 24,
but the moment was that 102 yard kick return.
- [Announcer] He's now off and blazing
and here goes Anthony Davis for the 102 yard--
- That turned everything around,
and we went on to win the national title.
(triumphant music) (crowd cheering)
And then my other moment is in baseball,
we played against Cal State LA,
and if I don't hit these two home runs in this game,
we don't go to the NCAA finals.
And that was my greatest achievement,
and those are my moments.
- So CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy,
and it tends to occur in athletes
who play collision based sports.
And it's due to repetitive sub-concussive impacts over time.
It can also be due to concussive impacts,
but a majority of the CTE occurs
because over time, you're having
these very frequent impacts
that are then resulting in emotional, cognitive,
and physiological changes in the brain.
- Dr. Willeumier came on the Amen team I think 2009.
I would bounce stuff off her
because she's a neuroscientist that knows
what she's talking about.
She understands the stuff missing inside that brain works.
- [Announcer] Behind the line of scrimmage,
it's Jimmy Stock again.
- I had a concussion.
Got injured simultaneously,
'cause I was the kick returner as well,
and I hurt my shoulder,
took a shot in the shoulder and the head.
So it was both the shoulder, and both the concussion,
and I did not play.
Matter of fact, I didn't even know my name hardly.
- I actually wrote to the commissioner
with the help of Anthony Davis,
and he never wrote me back.
If I was the commissioner, I'd admit I had a problem.
And I would be the world leader in promoting brain health.
But because they denied it,
and they have this blemish,
mothers are pulling kids out of football left and right.
- They know it's causing brain damage.
They know that.
They have neuro doctors, and people,
and professionals who know that.
I know they're working on helmet technology.
That's good.
But the thing is, it doesn't matter
what kind of technology you have with the helmet.
Your brain's gonna shake.
I don't care if you put a tank around your head,
that brain shakes,
and inside of that brain is jagged edges.
It's very devastating.
Whenever you get, you shake.
And the way these guys shake and hit the ground, is trauma.
I had a friend by the name of Don Baucus.
He was a pharmaceutical major at USC.
He was a big fan of mine.
I was his favorite player.
He took pictures of me all the time.
And he, we had a conversation, and he said,
you know, you took a lot of physical shots in football.
And I said one of 'em, you took a lot to the head.
And he said "You know,
"have you ever had your brain scanned?"
And I says, "No, I don't need it, I'm fine!"
He says, "Well, I think you need to look at that."
And he started talking about a guy
by the name of Dr. Daniel Amen.
And I said, "Well, I don't need that."
But I was on the 405 freeway two weeks after that,
going north, and I blanked out.
And when I came to, I was on the shoulder
with my foot on the brake.
If I'd done went left,
we wouldn't be sitting in this thing doing this interview.
And then, so I called Don,
I said "Don, you know that guy
"you were telling me about, Dr. Amen?"
He says, "You need to set something up."
- He was suffering at the time.
His memory wasn't good, his temper wasn't good,
his judgment wasn't good.
- He looked at my brain and he diagnosed it
as an 85 year old brain.
(dramatic music)
And I looked at him, I said
"Man, you gotta be smokin' something.
"I mean, my brain's not 85 years old."
And I thought he was a little quacky
tellin' me something like that,
but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
- [Narrator] And Mark Rypien was about to showcase
his signature talent on football's biggest day.
(dramatic music)
With his bad hair, and bizarre celebration,
Mark Rypien proved that style points
were of no value in the Super Bowl.
- You know, I watched that in slow motion,
I go, oh my goodness, what is he doing?
But, it's just the emotions got me at that time.
You know, this is the Super Bowl
and we are handing it to 'em.
(pleasant music)
I played football because the other kids in the neighborhood
were playing football.
To be honest with ya, I hated football.
I had to tackle people, I got tackled,
I came home crying at times.
And coaches wanted that.
They liked that.
They liked saying, hey, you gotta be tough.
You gotta be tougher than the other team.
That was just the way it was.
You get injured for a period of time,
you come to the sideline shaking the cobwebs out,
or a trainer comes out, they put up how many?
And you say four, and they go, well that's close enough.
(crowd cheering) (dramatic music)
Of course in the NFL,
the ultimate goal is to put one of these rings
on your finger, and not only just winning the Super Bowl,
but the memories and the stories of the guys
that, you know, you went to work with
each and every day that put out that effort,
just as I did, to make yourself a better person,
a better teammate.
Back in 1991, '92,
we had probably most success
of any team in the history of the NFL
as throwing the ball deep down the field.
If they say you hit maybe 10%
of your deep throws, you're doing pretty well.
I mean, we were in the forties to 50% of our deep throws,
which was absolutely incredible.
One of the most successful seasons
in the history of the NFL,
and culminating with the Super Bowl, XXVI MVP,
and just a great group of guys.
(players grunting)
I think we were up 27 to 14, start of the fourth quarter.
Buffalos still had an outside chance, and I threw a spiral.
That was, I think was the funniest part about the,
the play is that I threw a nice, tight spiral.
Gary caught it, and at that point in time
we pretty much felt that this game is over with,
and put us ahead 38 to 14,
went on to win Super Bowl XXVI.
When it comes to plays, whether it be on the golf course,
or the football field,
I can remember them like it was yesterday,
where I can't remember what I did yesterday,
so has an interesting impact
in how my brain kinda does function
and doesn't function at times.
- I honestly didn't notice anything that I identified
as a serious neurological problem,
'til about four and a half years into the relationship.
- The short term memory is very difficult.
Long term memory is difficult,
and there's long term memory that's good.
So, there's certain aspects of what's going on in there
that are functioning, and others that aren't.
There's impulse control, compulsiveness,
there's anger, road rage, yelling at people
picketing for better wages for school.
Some mental things that are going on.
Insanity would be the only word.
- It seemed to be getting progressively worse.
His neurological symptoms
were so varied and all over the board
that I really didn't even understand them.
- But got called in for the office,
and said hey, you could call your wife.
Your son is in the hospital.
So I called her, and she said,
"Well, Andrew's had a seizure."
I flew home, they took some scans,
and they saw that there was a mass.
The night of August 21st, I went to bed,
Andrew laid between my wife and I at the time,
and the next thing you know about three in the morning,
my wife said, "He's gone."
I go, I know, I took him outside,
thinking she was talking about the dog,
and she goes, "No, Andrew's, Andrew's gone.
"He passed away in his sleep."
Yeah, of course I lost it.
I grabbed him.
I was walking around the neighborhood
with him, and holding him.
It was, yeah.
It was sad, you know, very sad.
- It starts with lack of sleep, losing relationships,
alcohol, drugs, and then, you know you get sad.
You get really sad because of things that have happened.
I played football, wanted to play college,
and was pursuing that,
and had an injury in football,
and kind of saw that go out the window.
After high school, and not being able
to go to college on scholarships,
you know, I wasn't doing anything with life.
I was running down a pretty bad road,
and I was sitting on the couch
and saw a Marine Corps commercial,
and was like, you know, it's time to go.
So I went down to the recruiting office the next day,
and signed up and was like, just get me out of here
as fast as you can, you know?
It was time to go.
- I had mixed emotions about that,
because he signed in a time that it was hard.
But, I respect and loved him so much
that I supported him no matter what.
(intense music)
- In the Marine Corps, my job was an assault man at 0351.
As an assault man, you work in teams of two,
and there's no one else to do it
except you and your buddy, you know, and your brother.
And so, you become very close with your, with your brother.
We were on the first push into Fallujah,
and, you know, went in at night time
with our NVG goggles.
(rockets hissing)
- [Reporter] Parts of Fallujah lie in ruins,
as Operation Phantom Fury unleashed the firepower
of the United States military on the town
they believe is terrorist central.
(intense music)
- Blake and I had set up a little hut
up on top of the roof, and was looking down the alleyway,
you know, waiting for him to come
and still hearing the rounds hitting the walls.
And he never, he never came.
So I ran back out there, and he was sitting in the stairwell
and he just had his finger straight, and off the trigger.
And you know, I, I grabbed him on his shoulder,
and his head tilted forward.
And I knew at that point he was gone,
and it was like someone had just turned like a faucet on,
and it just came running all down the front of his face.
And so I, I ran to the doorway and yelled for Corpsman,
and went back out there,
and started to try to get him off the rooftop.
- [Reporter] So far, 22 US and Iraqi troops
have been killed.
About 170 have been wounded.
- It's the roughest thing
that I've ever had to see and witness,
and you know, seeing your buddy take his last breaths,
and gasping for air.
So I carried Blake's dog tags around with me the whole war.
I wore it around my hand,
and I even wrote Blake's name on my trigger finger.
You know, everything from that point on was for Blake.
And after I got out of the military,
I continued that and carried Blake's dog tags
everywhere I went.
- There were times that he would just
drink, drink, drink, drink, drink,
because he was drowning his head out.
And so there were times that he did drink way too much.
- [Man] PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder.
It is emotional trauma that leaves
this signature in your brain.
(tense music)
And can we separate traumatic brain injury
from post traumatic stress disorder?
And we showed we could separate them
with high levels of accuracy.
When you're emotionally traumatized,
you can't stop thinking about it.
Your brain becomes overactive.
Where if I bang your head against
the windshield of a car, it damages those circuits,
and it becomes underactive.
(dramatic music)
- [Julianna] Gymnastics is a pretty dangerous sport.
I actually fell out of a tumbling pass.
I slammed the back of my head.
- She came home that night and everything was fine.
She went back to school the next day,
and that that point she had not lost consciousness,
but at that point she tumbled again,
and did lose consciousness in the air,
and did what they call a face plant in gymnastics.
So she hit the top of her head,
and I didn't learn 'til all the years later
that those two impacts were considered a double impact,
within 24 hours.
She actually could have died.
- Back in June of 2013, I happened to be working
for a camp that summer in between undergrad
and heading off to Nashville to grad school.
First day of training, I got caught up in a rope.
I tucked and rolled,
and I landed on my head right about here,
kind of the crown of my head,
and on a rec center floor.
Everybody heard it, they turned around,
and I was in pain, but nobody did anything right away.
- The meds that were being prescribed
were only making her more fatigued and more disoriented.
- I literally lived on their couch
for the next three months.
Trying to go outside on the Fourth of July,
I didn't even last five minutes.
I was in so much pain,
not just physically, but emotionally and mentally.
It got to a point where I just said,
"Okay, I will go under the knife."
I said, "There has to be something else wrong.
"They're missing something.
"Just cut my brain open and figure it out,
"because there's something else going on.
"I will risk it."
- [Alan] My heart surgery was over seven hours,
and it was very complicated.
My doctors told us that I had the heart
of an 80 year old man.
- [Woman] So when the cells in your brain
do not receive enough oxygen,
we could eventually lose that tissue.
And that could happen through a surgical procedure,
if somebody is not getting enough blood flow to the brain.
- My wife did tell me later that doctors
had told her that I was serious enough
that the girls should be called home from college,
and come see their father,
because it might be the last time.
- It was a really frightening experience.
I was away on spring break, actually with friends.
And I got that call you never want to get,
where they say "Get on the next plane, it's an emergency."
- It took me years to recover.
It just was a very difficult operation,
because they cracked open my chest, moved all my organs,
put everything back together again.
Because I was a such a young person at 50,
they wanted to give me every chance never to do this again.
The first time I realized that I was
in trouble with my memory was in Mass General
when my children came in with my wife,
and I could remember Jerry's name,
but I could not remember Amy and Heather.
And I kept staring at them,
trying to remember who they were.
And it was tough on me, but it was tougher on them.
- And I was not even 20 years old.
And I was very scared, the scaredest I had ever been.
- I don't think people who are not in pain
30 days a month, 365 days a year
can understand how you feel.
I have tremendous nightmares,
and I've hit Jerry in bed.
I've jumped out of bed
at least once a month, for years.
I've banged my head on the dresser.
I've broken a rib.
I became very depressed,
and I started to see a psychiatrist.
And I told him many times that
I have to figure out a way to kill myself.
- No matter when the injury happened,
if it happened yesterday, or if it happened 20 years ago,
the tissue's still inflamed.
But, the change in the DNA is significant,
because what's being expressed
and what's being suppressed over time, changes.
That being said, you can still work
on the neuroinflammatory aspect.
You can still work on the hormone aspect.
It just takes more time,
and it's more subtle.
The longer an injury has been there,
the harder it is to recover.
- Just the surgery, the coronary artery bypass surgery,
a lot of people don't know
that increases your risk of memory problems.
You don't have Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease would show
the back half of your brain is dying.
But, your memory centers?
They're in trouble.
This is your temporal lobes.
That surgery was involved in damaging
your hippocampus.
And they didn't even tell you that
as one of the risk factors,
'cause they never do.
- No, and also for a year they fought me about,
my memory would come back.
- Hippocampus is Greek for seahorse,
and the hippocampus is one of the very few
parts of your brain
that actually produces new cells every day.
New little baby seahorses.
You create about 700 of them.
So there are many ways you can grow these baby seahorses.
- Difference between a vitamin and a hormone,
a vitamin works as a code factor
in a chemical reaction.
A hormone goes into our genetic material
and turns on genetic code to make things.
So in the past 10 years,
what they found out about the vitamin D,
besides bone, anti-cancer, more in women than in men.
Anti-depression, anti-Alzheimer's, anti-dementia.
Raises the pain threshold,
protects the heart from inflammation.
Helps the pancreas with insulin production.
It helps the testicles and the ovaries
with hormone production.
A combination of vitamin D and pregnenolone
protect the brain.
- [Alan] With Dr. Gordon's protocols so far,
there have been some improvements.
I have not fallen out of bed
more than twice in the last seven months.
And, my dreams have changed.
I'm calmer.
The only thing that's changed
are the different pills that I'm taking
that Dr. Gordon has recommended.
And he recommended those
based on a complicated system of blood tests.
- [Man] You know, he gets the report back
and he's like, hey man you're deficient on everything,
but we can fix this.
- We have a understanding of what will benefit the patients
based upon doing biomarkers, blood work,
which are specifically tagging the brain functioning.
And what we've found relative to neuroendocrinology,
specifically with stroke, is that things like estradiol
help to regain the neuroplasticity
by improving the neuro communication.
Other things like progesterone and pregnenolone,
these are neuroprotective,
and they can actually help with regeneration of nerves.
(somber music)
- The first panic attack I remember,
I was in the gym, just training by myself.
It felt like something like hit me.
Like I had the wind knocked out of me.
And then I started to hyperventilate,
became really, really dizzy.
So I had to sit down, felt this wave of emotion
come on me after that.
That was the first one that ever happened, man,
and I was just like hey, keep it together and don't cry.
I didn't know what to do, and it wasn't going away.
It was gettin' worse, so I went to the liquor store,
bought liquor, and was just drinking out of the bottle,
and driving, and trying to slow that panic attack down.
- I couldn't drive for more than a half an hour at a time
without getting dizzy, and having double vision.
I think I described it to my mom as two cinderblocks
just smashing my head together.
- I remember getting home, and I was in the basement
of a buddy's house, and I remember
their blacklights were on, and no lights.
I pulled my rifle out of my case,
and I put a round in the chamber and,
and put the weapon off safe,
and I swallowed the barrel,
and looked in the mirror and just bawled.
I was crying.
And I just saw my mom staring over my casket.
- I was watching my granddaughter
while my daughter was out with her friends,
having her 20th birthday.
At that time, I just was like, you know,
I want to check out, I'm gonna to check out,
and I'm gonna make this happen,
holding grandbaby in my arms, you know,
and lay on the floor so when my daughter comes home,
she can have to live the rest of her life
knowing that her dad took his life
while he was watching her daughter, our granddaughter.
That was pretty low,
and that was what I was doing.
So, absolutely reckless, irrational.
My subconscious says, I need, I need help.
You know, who do I call?
- There's things that we all go through
that we don't necessarily wanna talk about,
and bring to the forefront.
And they're hard, and they're difficult,
and they're challenging.
There were things that he brought up.
For one, sleeping with loaded weapons
next to his pillowcase,
and how much he was drinking, how close he was to suicide.
He didn't confide those things in me.
- You raise your hand, you've been this high performer
in situations that are life and death.
My life has gone off the rails, and I need help.
The first answer was like, you know,
put him on an antianxiety pill.
Put him on a benzodiazepine,
put him on an antidepressant.
You can't sleep?
Put him on sleeping pills.
You can't stay awake?
Put him on methamphetamine.
- They pumped Xanax, Lexapro, and Ambien
were the three medications that I was on.
- I remember just trying to look right, or left
with my eyes or my head, and I couldn't.
And so I requested to go to the hospital,
the scans came up clean.
They gave me Percocet, and sent me on my way.
- The psychotherapy begat more psychotherapy,
and the medication begat more medication.
Throw in drinking, throw in not sleeping well,
having a poor diet, and everything else,
and now you have a true recipe for disaster.
- I remember going to sleep on a Monday,
and I woke up Tuesday the next week.
My heart had stopped, and I was in a coma.
- He would go upstairs and just lay in the closet
in the fetal position,
and I was constantly telling the kids to be quiet.
I didn't want them to make any noise.
I didn't want them to bother him.
I didn't know what to do, so I left him alone.
I just had to let him work it out.
I had no idea what he was going through.
- And so the side effects, and the symptoms
that I experience from, as a result of these medications
were worse off than when I started.
- Of course, he always thought I was the crazy one.
I, and at one point I remember
standing in front of the refrigerator and saying,
"You make me so angry,
"I just want to kill myself," because...
(Becky sniffles)
Sorry.
- We're talking about people that are ready
to end their lives, because it's so bad.
Talking about people that,
no matter what kind of thoughts they put in to like,
trying to be good, or live a happy life,
or they love their family,
but when you have this weight, and this gravity
that consumes you, no matter what you want to do,
and you can't overcome it, even as much as you want to,
and you're trying everything you can do,
it's a miserable existence.
- My identity was in special forces,
and that was taken away because of the medical injuries.
And this is probably gonna be the new you.
You're gonna be on these medications,
take a pen and a pad everywhere you go,
and learn how to live within these new parameters.
(dramatic music)
- I must've been eight or 10 years old
when I rode my first wave.
Mavericks is a particular wave that's up in Half Moon Bay.
It's one of the biggest waves in the world.
It's probably the most challenging wave to paddle into.
And it's really, really famous.
And it's only an hour from my house,
and the wave that I loved,
and spent 10 years straight surfing every time it broke.
(waves crashing)
I remember surfing with my dad, and my brother.
The first time he took me out,
riding that first wave on my own,
and just being totally hooked.
(waves crashing)
When I started surfing professionally,
I must've been about 25 years old.
It's pretty crazy to be
in the Guinness Book of World Records.
I have two records in there,
and it was kind of always the plan.
Like, when I surfed big waves,
my goal was always to try to catch
the biggest wave in the world.
And I did that at Mavericks,
and I cut a 55 footer, set a world record,
and that was incredible.
And then I did it two years later at Cortes Bank.
I caught a 61 foot wave, and broke the record again.
So, you know, for me, it's just something
that I'll always remember.
Like, set two world records?
That's crazy.
Like, a childhood dream come true type of thing.
- We'd go up there and watch the contest,
and you kinda just hold your breath
until he's out safe, you know?
- You know, you fall all the time surfing,
not that big of a deal,
but surfing some pretty hazardous waves.
So, from the brain scans that I've done,
they show that I've had hundreds,
if not thousands of concussions.
- The actual definition of concussion
is a biomechanical force to the head
that results in pathophysiological changes.
And so these changes can be as simple as
lack of blood flow to that tissue.
It can again be the shearing and tearing of the neurons,
the stretching of the axons.
(dramatic music)
- The big concussion, the big TBI that I suffered
this most significant damage from
was coming up here to three years.
It was, I was surfing down in Big Sur,
and I went head first into a rock,
and I broke my neck in four places.
I barely stayed conscious,
and I was in a really bad situation.
Long story short was I survived.
Broken neck was what everyone was worried about,
but to me, it was my brain wasn't working.
Everything was off, everything was really bad.
It was really dark, it was scary.
But, I didn't have my neck collar on anymore
after like four months, and everyone thinks I'm fine.
Meanwhile, my life is an absolute disaster,
but they can't see it.
That impact into that rock was kind of the straw
that broke the camel's back.
My brain just collapsed.
I was becoming such a,
like a virus to my family
that it wasn't fair for me to be here.
Even though they wouldn't want that, but.
- [Woman] Did you ever feel like killing yourself
- [Shawn] Yeah, many times.
- [Woman] How were you thinking, or what were you thinking?
(Shawn sighs)
- Swim out in the ocean, and just drown myself.
I mean, I knew how to barely stay alive from drowning.
I knew what it would be like,
and it just seemed like all I gotta do
is just hold my breath, and I can do that.
I dunno, it was just like I had,
I didn't wanna do that,
but it became like an obsession.
I couldn't turn off that message,
that the only way out of this is just to go.
(emotional music)
- So initially, when Shawn came to see us,
he was depressed, and hopeless.
Had memory problems and brain fog.
- He was up all night from the pain meds
giving him insomnia.
And she was up all night.
So, I literally didn't sleep.
And then we had him in the day to you know,
get off to school and hand feed Shawn breakfast.
But every time we have
something tough in life, we get through it.
- It was, it was terrifying.
It was every day I was scared.
- The phone call that I received was devastating,
where she said what had happened to her,
that she was raped.
It was night, and she said she was kind of
at the end of her rope, and she was gonna take her life.
(emotional music)
And my heart stopped, I couldn't breathe.
It was just like, somebody punched me right in the stomach.
- It got real quiet.
And I looked in, and he was physically
kind of leaning over, like he did get sucker punched,
and it was, I just, I'll never forget it.
But I heard him say three things.
Annie, not in words, but in,
in how he reacted.
I believe you, go report this, and we've got your back.
- You know, I asked her, did you report it?
Did you tell anyone?
And her response was, "Well, everyone knows."
What do you mean everyone knows?
Oh my roommates, my counselor, my coaches.
- [Annie] High school years, I was very focused
on doing really good in school.
Soccer became very intense in high school.
- [Russ] Annie and I were always close.
I was her first coach.
So it's easier for her and I to communicate.
We see many of the same goals.
In fact, our family goals are very similar.
- [Annie] My top three choices
were Navy, Princeton, and Harvard.
And after doing some recruiting travels
up to each of the schools,
I really noticed that the Naval Academy
had a great balance of education, as well as athletics.
The leadership acquired as a woman,
I thought would be very valuable down the line for me.
- Ultimately, the decision was hers.
It was, it was her choice.
- About a month in, I went to a lacrosse house party.
I was invited by my soccer teammates, and I went there.
There was a lot of alcohol.
There was a lot of people I did not know.
Served drinks, after drinks, after drinks.
And eventually, just went and passed out in a room,
and woke up the next morning to find that I was raped.
(somber music)
And so what I did was just really compartmentalize
what had happened to me in the back of my brain,
shoved it in what I call a closet,
and locked the door, and just tried to move on
as best as I could, to be as successful as I could.
- The chaplain of the Naval Academy
who was an officer escorted her back to her company,
reported her, turned her in, provided no counseling.
Imagine a man, my age, mid fifties,
telling a 19 year old rape victim
to suck it up, to grow up.
- And I would continue going back
with just these feelings of depression, anxiety,
suicidal ideations.
And they would just keep upping and upping the dose,
until it got to a point where I wasn't sleeping.
I mean, it was, it was terrible.
- She had to go in and give her story to the NCIS,
and I accompanied her to that.
And then she, she had to,
she gave her story to this commander,
this woman late in the evening.
As we were leaving, I said,
"Now Annie, is there anything else you have to tell me?"
I mean, is there anything else?
And she said, "Well, it happened again."
I'm like, what?
And I call, I had that woman's phone number,
the commander woman, I call her.
I said, "All right, ma'am are you still in your office?"
"Yeah."
I said, "We will be right back.
"My daughter just informed me there's been another rape."
I just couldn't believe
what the hell is going on at that place?
And so, and then she, Annie reported the second one
to her in detail,
and then she had to go report that again to NCIS.
(dramatic music)
- The military is very good for having this brotherhood.
We all stick together.
In fact, they have this motto in the Marine Corps,
no man left behind.
But they leave women behind all the time.
In fact, that's kind of their unofficial motto,
leave the women behind.
So there is no sisterhood.
- Not one of those military women
said anything to Annie, like, you know,
very proud of you for your courage to speak the truth.
Not one.
I was in shock that there was, there's just no support.
- These feelings of suicide just became so great
that I didn't feel safe being alone anymore.
And I told my company officers,
and they immediately sent me to a psych ward.
I stayed there for several days,
and they diagnosed me with what's called
borderline personality disorder.
And this is something that they consider a condition,
not a disability.
And I felt that they quickly, quickly, you know,
tried to push me out.
- When Annie was separated from the Naval Academy,
and if you read her discharge papers,
and the meeting minutes from her academic review board
were the entire hearing was about her medical condition.
Well, wait a minute,
there was no medical doctors present at her review board.
They broke so many laws, which are right now
being investigated by Congress.
So we're, we're gonna get to the bottom of it.
- The Navy continues to defend the ever growing claims
of military sexual assaults at the Naval Academy as small,
and that those women who reported being raped
were just mentally ill.
How shameful.
- Neurotrauma, it's a chemical reaction.
And that chemical reaction will impede,
or interrupt the normal chemistry of the brain.
And it's that interruption of the normal chemistry
of the brain that leads to things like personality change,
cognitive, memory, mood changes.
- [Man] When you see somebody going through that,
and becoming a shell of the person they were,
it's incredibly difficult,
and you feel even more helpless than they do.
- [Reporter] Startling figures
straight from the US government
show one out of three women soldiers
are sexually assaulted in the military.
- You're changing people's future.
You're literally giving them an option
that they didn't know existed.
They thought their world was black.
And then you open a door and like, oh, you can be okay.
- The key that drives me on this
is guys getting back into life,
going to Pepperdine Business School now.
Guy who was, attempted school five times,
and the fifth time he was on our protocol
for two or three months, he ends up getting honors.
- So the challenge was to figure out
how to make life worth living again, right?
And it was a decision, bottom line.
And I think that's, that's the human experience.
It's not specific to me.
Our son had a genetic lymphatic malformation in his neck.
He's like 13 months old.
So we had to take him to the emergency room.
My calf had been killing me for about three days,
and then Becky goes into labor.
So I'm going back and forth
between the fifth floor and the second floor,
and I'm like dragging my leg at this point.
Well, we get Jace out of surgery.
We have our son, Joe Joe, he's good to go.
And then it turns out they finally rushed me
into imaging, and I had a blood clot in my leg,
and it's broken off into both lungs.
So now I have a bilateral pulmonary embolism.
- Jesus Christ.
- And at this point, they're like hey man,
we have a very small window here.
This is very high mortality rate.
It wasn't a big deal to me, you know?
It was like, you guys think that this is going to kill me,
you're gonna have to get in line
'cause it's not happening.
And I remember I got to go down and visit my son
in emergency recovery.
I had an airplane bottle of whiskey,
and I popped the last pain pill I ever took.
I had this epiphany that hey, if I continue
on this same track, it's gonna kill me,
and it's gonna ruin everything that I love.
And so I made the promise to my son right then and there
that I was gonna get off all medication.
And I was gonna return to the man of my pre-injury status.
I was going to find a way to heal myself.
I don't care how, I don't know how,
but I've had enough.
So I started going and looking for alternative therapies.
- [Gordon] Andrew's a very unique individual.
He was almost a conundrum when he arrived,
because he's such a personable person.
And that's something you don't often see
in patients that have significant injury.
And he was receiving multiple hours of therapy,
and throughout the time, vestibular rehabilitation,
gaze exercises, physical therapy, chiropractic care.
- When Dr. Gordon first reached out to me,
I thought it was comical.
'Cause you know, he was, you listed out his credentials
that he wanted to help,
that they'd been treating TBI,
that they had a legitimate answer,
and that, you know, they've enlisted this answer
with massive success over the years.
And he, he wrapped it up as saying,
oh yeah, and by the way, I'm not a kook,
in case you're worried.
And I was like, oh, this guy's hilarious, if nothing else.
So, then I looked at some of the media
that he suggested, and I started to get really excited
and I saw the validity,
and the utility in what he was doing and applying.
- My focus was in the area of neuroendocrinology
looking at the influence of hormones on the brain function.
And the precipitated deficiency caused by the trauma.
The hormones produced in the brain called the neurosteroids,
they have the immediate effect
because they influence the membranes
of neurons to do things.
- And life slowly and surely started to turn back on.
- [Man] When Andrew finally started to get to a point
where he was becoming more of his old self,
and he said, I have so many brothers.
We need to have a foundation that helps them.
And I said, dude, I'm right there with you.
- He just decided that I'm gonna start a foundation
to help these guys get the treatment that they need,
because they're not getting it
through the conventional methods.
And so that was the beginning of Warrior Angels Foundation.
- When Adam came to me and told me
he wanted to get out of the military
to pursue Warrior Angels Foundation, I was terrified,
because we were leaving all the security
that the military offered,
and you know, the steady paycheck, and the benefits.
I mean it turned out to be this amazing mission
that's come true, and so many people are being helped now.
- I feel like me and my brothers, all of 'em in our own way
were like binary stars in that we have this gravity
and energy that pulls from one another.
I feel their pain.
I feel their joy.
Like, we share in life's wonderful splendor together,
and then we travel through
the depths of despair together, as well.
We're working towards widespread implementation
within the military, the DOD,
the Veterans Affairs, the NFL,
the NCAA, the NHL.
- And now I'm excited to say, man,
three years later, we've delivered it
to over 200 people with incredible results.
So it meets with the scientific criteria.
We can predict, we can measure,
and we can replicate.
And now it's not just my story.
Mark's done this like 1,400 times.
- Many veterans still struggling to adjust
to life back home.
Now, two veteran brothers are offering hope and healing
the invisible wounds of war.
Fox News, medical A team Dr. Mark Siegel joins us now
with retired Green Beret, Andrew Marr,
and his brother and former Army Apache pilot,
the co-founders of the Warrior Angels Foundation.
- I'm the one who actually saw a news,
think it was "Fox and Friends," or something.
There was this new thing for PTSD, stick with us,
and so I recorded it.
I was like, oh my god, this is in Grapevine,
which is 10 minutes from us.
So, it seemed like a no brainer to reach out to them.
- We said, you know what, what the hell?
Let's just reach out.
Let's see if maybe we can meet him,
maybe I can involved in this program.
Andrew actually came over to my parents' house.
He showed us this video all about what he was going through,
and what the treatment was like.
He explained everything, and it was shortly after
where I did get in touch with Dr. Gordon himself,
and he explained how the protocols worked,
and I had to get a blood test done.
Do you, is there a noticeable difference
between those of us, like I wasn't a blast trauma victim.
I didn't go and do any tours of duty.
I was sexual assault victim, I was raped,
and I wasn't necessarily conscious during those events.
Is there a difference that you see
between those of us who have that sort of trauma
versus a physical, you know, like a blast trauma?
- Right, no, it's a good question.
All those peripheral things,
and I apologize for making it seem little,
but all those peripheral things end up
creating the same kind of biochemical trauma
in the brain, whether or not there was a blast,
or your head was hit, or you were physically assaulted,
and the head was involved, or the body was involved.
It elicits the same inflammation
that occurs like say in Alzheimer's disease.
And Parkinson's, they're all inflammatory illnesses.
- It was all natural and primarily vitamins,
and hormone replacement.
- Everything is FDA approved.
Everything is being used at physiological levels.
I think I shared with you on a past show
that we use a blended testosterone injectable
that we developed about 14 years ago.
- It did take some time.
It wasn't something like how the pharmaceuticals work,
where it kicks in within, you know, a month.
- We have to first go from the effects of every medication
to a starting point.
And sometimes that's the delay,
and it all depends on how you responded
to how many medications you were on.
- So at that point, I began weaning off
of the pharmaceuticals.
The VA had me on this thing called Effexor,
which I was on for little bit at the Naval Academy.
And that was just terrible getting off of.
It was a very, you had to get off very slowly.
It was something that Dr. Gordon knew about.
He supported me getting off of it,
but we had to do it at a pace
that my body could handle.
And so, I was probably maybe eight to 12 months
into the protocol when I was officially,
100% off of every pharmaceutical drug.
- You know, part of my problem too is
from the broken neck, I was on an insane amount of opioids.
I, by December I weaned myself off of them,
just because it wasn't helping me.
I was going crazy on that stuff.
Like, I don't do well on that stuff.
- [Gordon] Shawn had no idea, had really,
until he had his injury,
never really thought about his brain.
- I made my appointment and I went and saw them,
and I really learned a lot about my injury,
and learned a lot about where I was.
And I learned, they got me on a path to start healing,
which led me down this amazing road.
- I practice an integrative approach,
looking to see how I can help patients
really find that holistic approach
that's going to help them most.
So, hyperbaric oxygen therapy works in a couple ways.
It works by decreasing inflammation.
That's probably the biggest thing it does.
It does that acutely.
It does it immediately.
So by going into the chamber,
you are decreasing inflammation everywhere.
Because if you've had an acute injury,
and you have swelling, and you have inflammation,
and some of those blood vessels aren't working anymore,
but you have some that are,
those blood vessels that are can diffuse in,
and prevent all that tissue from breaking down,
which can be huge for somebody's recovery.
We're talking about a brain here, right?
We're talking about a brain that every single piece
of real estate is extremely important.
So you don't want to mess with that.
So that's why I often recommend different protocols
depending on what's going on.
So Shawn, for example,
all these mildly concussive injuries that he had surfing.
Or Andrew, with these maybe mild to moderate
concussive injuries from IED blasts.
He didn't have any symptoms right away,
but either, it was the last injury for Shawn that did it.
Or for Andrew, it was just a cumulative process
that he just didn't notice it was happening.
But it's all of that over time,
or the single hit at the end
that throws you over the edge.
You've had these pebbles,
and then all of a sudden, the pebbles have all these ripples
and the ripples aren't working, and all that brain
is just hibernating, it's not working.
It's stunned, and then bam, your executive function goes.
Your personality changes.
You start having violent tempers.
- Dr. Sherr was just like, you're not doing hyperbaric yet?
You need to do it, like come to my clinic.
We'll get you in right away.
I'm not really able to make rational decisions,
so it was like hyperbaric, whatever,
okay I'll try it, you know?
And the first time I got in the chamber was incredible.
I came out feeling so much better, clearer,
like a huge, noticeable difference.
It felt like if I described my recovery,
like at that first hyperbaric,
I felt like I had maybe like a 25% recovery.
It was just finally my brain got oxygen, and fresh blood.
And so I was going five days a week,
and I was doing it twice a day.
- So we do a study
called brain SPECT imaging, S-P-E-C-T.
And SPECT is a nuclear medicine study
that looks at blood flow and activity.
It looks at how your brain works.
It's different from a CAT scan or an MRI.
Those are anatomy studies.
They show what the brain actually physically looks like.
We're looking at function.
And SPECT is a leading indicator
of trouble where an MRI or CT scans
are lagging indicators of trouble.
So it'll tell you trouble is calming.
It'll also tell you well, how much better
can I make this brain?
- 10 years later, I was still on the program
and significant improvement.
Now after 10 years, he scanned my brain again,
and like I was tellin' folks in our little circles,
he was so happy to see the results of my scan
after 10 years.
You know how some people say,
yeah I'm taking it, doc.
I'm doing this, I'm taking them things,
and you say okay, and they know,
from their medical background, that you're not doing it.
But when he saw my brain,
he knew that I was taking it religiously every day.
And he was like, to me, he was like a kid in a candy store.
'Cause he saw the results.
I really didn't know.
I'm not a doctor.
I just know I feel good.
And I'm a common sense guy.
I feel good, and I'm functioning better.
- One of the reasons I love seeing professional athletes
is they like being coached.
And Anthony's the most coachable of all of my patients.
- If you play the game, you have to treat the brain.
If you don't treat the brain, the brain will fade.
If you don't treat the brain,
the brain will die.
For any you NFL players,
when you're playing to this day,
what you need to do,
you need to be on this kind of program.
Preventative measures to take care of you,
because anybody who puts a helmet on their head
has brain trauma.
I don't care who you are.
I don't care if you play five years
in the National Football League,
10 years, 15 years, 20 years.
I can't conceive it now
based on what I know about brain trauma.
What you need to do, you need to get out of the game.
When you retire, first thing you need to do
is go find out about your brain function.
- They finally are seeing that trauma
will cause the appearance of Alzheimer's disease.
In fact, the NFL did a study some years back,
just within five years,
where they found that if a player had one concussion
on the field, that they were 19 times more at risk
of developing Alzheimer's between 30 and 49 years of age,
because of inflammation.
- And if you're gonna play,
you should be on a rehabilitation program all the time.
'Cause the fact is, they're brain damaging jobs.
Being a firefighter is clearly a brain damaging job.
Almost every firefighter I've scanned
has a toxic looking brain.
- [Man] So you have no idea right now?
- [Woman] Oh there's another one, another plane just hit!
Oh my god, another plane has just hit another building.
(sirens wailing)
- [Reporter] All operations at the New York Airport
seem to be secured.
John F. Kennedy International--
(people screaming) (somber music)
- On the morning of 9/11, 2001,
I was in Brooklyn.
(horn blaring)
The bells went off, and we went,
and we queued up at the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel.
(people screaming)
We had witnessed the one tower fall from the other side.
- [Man] Oh my god!
- And we proceeded through on foot,
as the second tower came down,
we ended up on the other side.
There was very few survivors.
We lost 343 firefighters that day.
The largest loss of life that FDNY has ever
gone through in our history.
(emotional music)
Survivor guilt is a big thing I think
that a lot of guys are dealing with,
and I'm sure a lot of people have gone through that.
But, to be able to hold your daughter,
or see your loved ones when someone else
didn't have that opportunity is very overwhelming.
So you question why.
(sirens wailing)
I think it's a process that happens,
and from talking to other firefighters,
and folks that were there, it's funny,
like you feel it in your body
when you get close to September 11th.
You would think that it would get easier, but.
- 9/11 every anniversary, it's very hard.
The day you just feel it's very somber,
and especially when my parents were still together,
and he was living in the house.
He would just sit and just watch the,
you know, the names being read off
of all the people that had passed.
And it was just very hard to see
someone that you love still battling those demons,
and everything that happened.
And you know, it still affects him today.
- We're exposed to amazingly difficult situations,
both physically, with exposure to chemicals,
which was secondary to us.
And the loss of life, and all the funerals
that needed to be tended to.
- Grief can absolutely impact your deep limbic centers,
as well as your anxiety centers.
And the closer we are to that person,
that hurt, that loss,
that profound sense of loss, our perception of it,
and we sort of turn it inward,
can really be for some people, very debilitating.
- But if you have crushing depression,
no one looks at your brain.
If your bones hurt, they're going to do an MRI on them,
but if your behavior is so bad
your wife wants to divorce you,
no one's gonna look at your brain.
I mean, it's really insane when you think about it.
- And you're not aware of it, that's the problem.
And the other person's not aware of it either,
unless they're a TBI, you know, professional,
and you know, that's part of the whole journey in life.
You don't know what you don't know until you know it.
- I was 16 years old and my parents split up,
and I remember every little detail about it.
- I didn't want it to happen.
But I didn't really realize that it wasn't my choice.
- I have three amazing daughters.
That's why I'm here.
Oh!
Oh, look at this!
Oh!
I was blessed to be present
for all three of my children's births
and coming into the world,
and it is just an amazing experience,
and you just have a steel cable bond at that point,
and that's it.
Well even off of here, and bounce it off to make it--
You know, you gotta protect 'em.
You can't believe these gifts,
and I look at them as gifts.
I don't look at them as my own.
- There's always the brighter end of the tunnel,
and that you could always get through something
when you're together with your family,
and I think that's what we really did
going through those times.
- I never heard of TBI being the silent killer,
but I've been lucky enough
to find out that
traumatic brain injury affects you pretty adversely.
And I went through my adverse times with it,
and not knowing it.
Headaches, frustration,
being short.
I, my brain just wasn't working right,
so I I'd have a conversation
and I'd be like, uh,
and then right, they'd go Sebby, uh?
You know, and I couldn't even speak sometimes
because of whatever was going on in my head,
and I had that thousand mile stare,
and a lot of cloudiness.
- Mark Rypien's one of the Super Bowl MVP quarterbacks.
His brain was terrible when we first met him.
- There was a period of time
where I literally had no hope.
I thought that Mark was on the downward decline so rapidly
that he would probably be institutionalized within the year.
- But I think it was three years ago
that I took those brain scans.
And then, most recently here,
Dr. Gordon filled out some paperwork with him,
and the hormone blood evaluation
to get some of the hormone things
that are gonna benefit me.
So it'll definitely help the brain,
and its ability to heal.
And then I'm about halfway through my treatments
with TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy.
- Gonna put the sticky thing on.
- Is this from our mapping we did last week?
- Yes.
And we're gonna put you in the same position
as we did, so we make sure to get the motor.
- Mark Rypien has come to see us
to treat both his depression and anxiety.
What we have found is that when people are depressed,
that pathway has become dysfunctional.
And in our treatment, it takes nearly 30 treatment sessions,
using a process we call neuroplasticity,
we're able to essentially get that connectivity
back functioning again.
So, what we do with transcranial magnetic stimulation,
we use a magnetic pulse
to stimulate brain cells to cause them
to depolarize, or fire.
And then we get a domino effect.
One cell fires, the next fires, the next.
And it's a cascade that goes down through circuitry,
down through the limbic system
that affects different parts of the brain.
We were the first, and may still be the only clinic
that received validation from the VA.
We can treat VA patients anywhere.
This is a group of patients, as a veteran,
I have a great deal of empathy for.
(dramatic music)
- I got an email from one of the guys
who had listened to our last podcast with Joe Rogan,
and he sends in, he says, "I watched your program,
"and what Andrew was saying was exactly
"what I was going through.
"I went to a store and I bought pregnenolone,
"and I've started using it.
"It's two weeks, the anxiety's gone."
- I've had about five emails just like that.
- Unbelievable! - Yep.
- Three months in, how did you feel
and what was the difference?
- I felt night and day different.
No more anxiety, no more depression,
no more balance issues, no more double vision,
no more blurry vision, no more migraine headaches.
- Something is different.
We just had a 45 minute phone conversation,
and he had not talked to any of us
more than what he had had to.
There were no conversations anymore with Andrew.
- I felt like myself again.
I'm off all medication.
You know, I'm clean, I'm sober,
performing as good, if not better than my pre-injury status.
The Warrior Angels Foundation, three years later,
we've delivered healing to other people
who were in the exact same predicament and situation
with incredible results.
- You were looking for someone that does what I do.
I was looking for someone like you.
And we met in the cloud.
- On social media, I saw that Andrew
started the Warrior Angels Foundation.
My wife was there and I'm like,
I know that guy, I know that guy, it's Andrew Marr!
But you know, he had this like big beard and longer hair,
so it took me a second too, to recognize him.
But, you know, he's pretty big human being
and with tattoos.
And it's like, yeah I know him.
And told him, I was like, look,
everybody thinks my life is incredible.
I'm like, but it's tough, man.
It is brutal for me to get through these days.
I don't sleep at night.
I'm in pain all the time.
I'm beginning to have these panic attacks.
And during that time,
I was pushed physically and mentally
beyond anything that I thought was humanly possible.
You know, I went an entire week without eating.
I didn't sleep for three days.
I lost 30 pounds in one month during a training iteration.
At the end of it, you know, just realized
what I was capable of doing.
- When Kevin was first deployed, it was scary.
Like you kind of prepare yourself,
but you don't know how it feels
until it actually happens.
- What got me through all the time, when he was deployed,
is I would send something in the mail to him, every day.
- My team and our Afghan commandos
were tasked to do a valley clearing operation
in the northwestern part of the country.
In the tenth hour, I found myself on a rooftop,
so I went around the corner of the building,
and all of a sudden it felt like somebody
hit me in the stomach with a sledgehammer.
I was just suspended in midair.
- Up gently underneath, like turn this out, okay?
- All right.
- Gently, pull him gently.
All right, go ahead, keep pulling, you got this.
- I was conscious the entire time that I was being treated,
and when they pulled me behind the building,
my teammates began flooding in,
and just started frantically working on me.
They were so focused on saving my life,
they forgot to give me my pain meds.
I said, you guys better give him my fucking morphine.
- Everybody stay calm, man.
He's gonna be fine.
(men chattering)
Everybody work together and stay calm.
- [Soldier] Returning fire!
(guns firing)
- They had to go through these open fields,
and kind of navigate their way
through this maze-like Afghan village.
The whole while, they're getting shot at and returning fire.
- I got the phone call, I think it was a Sunday morning,
maybe about like seven, so I was still sleeping.
So I thought it was Kevin calling,
and then it was Adam, and then it's like,
it's strange that Adam would call,
but we're friends, so I didn't think,
I was kind of groggy and didn't think a whole lot of it.
What's up?
He was like, "Well, everything's okay."
I call it now the it's okay sandwich.
So he said, "Everything's okay, Kevin got shot,
"but everything's okay."
- That first surgery tent that I went to
was a place called BMG, the Bala Murghab river valley.
From that surgery tent, I went to Herat airfield.
From Herat to Bagram, and then from Bagram
I went to Landstuhl in Germany,
and that's where I woke up.
In Germany it was kind of like this blur for me.
I had a friend that was there
who was convalescing from his wounds.
He had gotten hit with two grenades,
so it was great to have this one person, at least,
that I knew, and after a couple minutes
he gave me the best advice.
He was like hey, listen Kevin,
plenty of people have been shot.
Don't be a fucking pussy about this.
(tense music)
I had spent so much time away on deployments,
and then I come back very injured.
And she was giving me a sponge bath,
and I just said to her, hey look,
do you wanna just get a divorce here, or what?
- Are you fucking kidding me?
You think I went through all of this,
and now you're getting out, and now I'm gonna leave?
No!
- She looks at me, she's like, "No, asshole.
"I'm giving you a sponge bath, of course I don't want to."
- When he told me about Dr. Gordon's protocol,
I was really skeptical at first,
and started talking about adjusting hormones.
Like, that affects, it goes everywhere in your body,
so you just don't know
what kind of effect it's going to have.
So, it was kind of scary to think about,
but he was at the point where he's like,
I don't know if I can physically keep up
with working a full time job.
- He sent me a protocol based specifically
off of my lab results.
And my results showed very low testosterone,
low growth hormone.
My adrenal glands, you know, really weren't working.
My cortisol levels were through the roof.
My thyroid was not functioning.
I had very low vitamin D levels.
And so he sent me a program
to basically counteract that.
When I started the protocol from Dr. Gordon,
I was actually away on work.
And so a month time, you know, elapsed before I went home.
And when I got home, my wife noticed
a very big difference in me
in terms of my energy levels, just seemed happier.
You know, wasn't as quick to trigger to anger,
and I also just felt like I was back to normal.
Like I was back to my old self,
and you know, really just kind of felt like
I had my old life and self back.
You were the first person that ended up saying
all right, well, let's do this full blood workup.
Let's take a look at this stuff.
And it felt good almost instantly,
just because I was like well, I'm not crazy.
Like there is something that's actually wrong with me.
- I had just done 80 hyperbaric chambers,
so I was feeling way better,
but I figured that I was going to
look a lot better on my scan.
And disappointingly, I didn't.
I didn't look really any better.
I mean, even though I felt better,
and I knew that we'd done better,
I still had so much damage.
- And that's where you have to go after all of the things
that traumatic brain injury can hurt.
- It caught Dr. Amen by surprise.
It caught Dr. Sherr by surprise.
It kind of was like, I'm a healthy individual,
I'm on an insanely good food regiment.
You know, everything.
Like I should be improving.
Dr. Amen's one recommendation to me
was you should go talk to a doctor named Dr. Gordon,
and it was like, whoa, that's who Sherr is recommending.
- Articles have come out talking about this
treatment resistance, or atypical depression.
In an article that I gave just recently
to a group of both military and civilian physicians
was the fact that this atypical depression,
a form of depression that medication did not seem to help,
that it turned out that 61% of them
were growth hormone deficient.
And within one to two months of replenishing
the growth hormone, their depression disappeared.
And then they had positive side effects.
- The beauty of doing hormone management,
if you're Dr. Gordon,
is that you can get people better, relatively fast,
and then they wanna take a dive in.
They wanna take a deeper dive
into how they can really manifest this,
or sustain it over the long term.
- The hormones, all the deficiencies in my body
were being taken care of.
And it was incredible.
Like I just kept getting better, and better, and better.
- The way that I see the hormones of the body is like a car.
Someone gives you a brand new Ford pickup truck,
and all four tires are deflated.
They're flat.
You get to choose what tire you want to fill up,
and therefore drive.
Obviously, it's not gonna happen.
Let's fill up two tires, okay three.
Let's go with three and a half tires,
and try and drive away.
Well, the hormones in our body
are the exact same way.
You need to have all the hormones at optimal levels
in order for our body to run through life,
drive through life with quality.
(gentle music)
- I was going to get a flight for Julianna and I
to go out to this place in Canada,
and get her some prayer for healing.
I heard a quiet voice within inside of me,
just wait one more day.
The next morning,
the first phone call was from Keith.
Bryan, I have a doctor that I think can help Julianna,
if you can get her out here in the next two weeks.
And he's the only one that ever looked at her blood work
to understand how her body
was unbalanced in terms of its chemistry.
- People are being confused by the use
of the term traumatic brain injury.
Traumatic brain injury they think is associated
with loss of consciousness, being knocked down,
being in a coma, having nausea, vomiting,
or confusion or amnesia.
But TBI has a mild form, has a moderate form,
and a severe form.
All of them lead to the same process of inflammation,
and the loss of hormones.
- After three months of treating with Dr. Gordon,
I mean, things changed around pretty quickly.
I was able to get out of bed.
I was able to think about exercising again.
The headaches and the pain had decreased tremendously.
My spirits were lifted.
I mean, anxiety stayed a little bit,
but was just so much better than it had been.
- She's been the healthiest we've ever seen.
We're very hopeful,
because she's at a great point right now.
We can see her progress,
and her attitude towards life improving.
This year is certainly much better than last year,
and the year before, and et cetera.
She's in the best place she's ever been.
- After I came back from Iraq,
I ended up taking myself off that medication
because it was not working for me.
I was still in a bad spot.
And I remember telling a commander
I had done this, and he basically chewed my ass, right?
Like, what are you doing?
This, you're not, no.
You were directed to take this stuff.
You need to take it.
This is gonna help.
(gentle piano music)
- A friend of his brought a piano
into his little tiny apartment thing,
because he was holed up there like a hermit,
and he had nothing else to do,
but to turn on a little radio
and learn how to play the piano.
With him constantly practicing on that,
I started seeing little glimmers of hope
for him and his brain.
He had excitement about Mom, look what I can do.
Look at this, this is so weird.
Prior to this, Ben had never read sheet music
or picked up an instrument.
And so, he just kept practicing off of what he could hear,
and what he could feel from playing.
No sheet music.
And he got better and better with that.
But what I started seeing in him
is that he started to go out of the house a little bit.
Like, I could get him to go to the grocery store with me
to get his groceries.
I don't know what happened in the brain,
with the music, and what he was concentrating on,
but it started instilling a little bit of confidence,
a little bit of value, a little bit of worth.
I have something here.
And so he would stay in that.
No one else was in his life doing anything with him,
but him and his music.
And one day I went over there and he said,
"Mom, listen.
"I learned this song," and he played the song to "Titanic,"
and it just blew me away 'cause I'm looking at this kid
who's been holed up doing nothing in life,
and then so beautifully can come across a piano
when he's never played in his life.
(emotional music)
- [Alan] Well, very recently I met this firefighter
who was one of the first responders at 9/11.
His memory is shot.
My memory is shot.
Do you mind if I ask you about the hyperbaric chamber?
- Not at all.
My first time, I felt,
I felt lighter when I got out of there.
The first time was scary going in.
And then the subsequent times, you get used to it.
You look forward to it.
It's all a matter of what you get used to.
- When my dad goes through the therapy,
and when he gets his treatments,
you notice it right away.
And I think, you know, he just has a better demeanor.
- A doctor that I was seeing who ended up
being a very, very good friend of mine,
knew about my concussive history,
and all of the issues that I went through.
And he said, Sebby, you know,
you really would benefit from hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
- There are 14 insurable conditions in the United States
which are Medicare approved,
and there are approximately 65 additional indications
which are not approved.
And are used, as well, all over the world
for those various conditions,
which include traumatic brain injury,
post traumatic stress,
all of the neurological presentations, amongst others,
including cancer and autism.
- The Israelis have the largest
hyperbaric program in the world.
They're doing the most studies.
They're doing the most patients.
They're seeing over 200 patients a day.
They have what's called a multiplace chamber,
which is where many people can get treated
all at the same time.
And what they've seen is that if you do
a full protocol of hyperbaric therapy,
you can regenerate the brain.
You can regenerate the heart,
but the Israelis are really paving the way.
The last I heard, there are 20,000 people
on their waiting list to be treated.
And that runs the gamut from rejuvenation protocols
to patients with traumatic brain injury,
and everything in between.
- Hyperbarics is an underutilized service
in the United States of America.
And one can only guess why.
I mean, my own crazy mind, I say,
well you can't patent oxygen,
so you can't make money on oxygen.
So therefore, the research and development
in relationship to hyperbarics possibly is not
as aggressive as it would be otherwise.
We're now seeing it start to evolve very significantly.
It's Asia, Russia, China, and Japan.
That's where they seem to be doing
a lot of significant work in regards to hyperbaric.
My expectation would be,
of the MRIs of 30 to 40 years ago,
so will hyperbarics be in five to 10.
Seven years ago, no one knew what hyperbarics was.
And now you're starting to see little blips everywhere,
particularly when it comes to concussion injuries.
And particularly when it comes to veterans.
- For me, it was really, really wild.
First time I sat down,
I said something really crazy to them.
And they said, it's not crazy.
I thought it was, I was embarrassed.
I said, "I feel like my brain is touching my skull,"
in a silly way.
Like, I feel like so much pressure.
I can't even touch my head.
I don't feel as sore,
you know, in my head, in my body.
And it was, for me, it was a very impactful thing.
And I bought into it right away.
- After hyperbaric hormone therapy,
I was like 75% better, 80% better, which was incredible.
I had quality of life.
I could functionally work.
I was a better husband, a father.
I had something to live for.
I was on my way.
And my wife started crying
because she saw the difference in me.
Like, I was back, you know?
I had personality, and I had emotions.
I was truly back, and,
you know, I'm just so grateful
that I had the opportunity to do all this stuff,
and I still, today I'm still improving.
I still feel like I'm getting better,
and I live a really healthy life
that I'm gonna try to do my best
to be around as long as I can.
- Ben loves "Survivor," and it's his favorite show to watch.
- Every Wednesday night, we throw the kids in our room
and they get to have movie night in Mom and Dad's room,
and my wife and I get to sit on the couch
and drink some wine, and watch "Survivor."
- Every time we watch it, he's like--
- Why are they doing this?
I could do that, or why aren't they looking there?
- Make a video and send it in.
If you're gonna be so great at this,
go ahead and do it.
- And so I did, I made a video the next day,
and sent it in, and it was
about a year and three months later
I heard something back from 'em,
and it was unreal.
At first, I thought it was a joke 'cause it took so long.
(intense music)
- [Jeff] On day one, Ben began the game on the Hero Tribe,
but losing the first immunity challenge.
Hustlers, you win immunity!
Forced Ben to form an early alliance.
- I kinda gotta say I had a leg up
because of the military, really.
Attention to detail is something you have to have,
especially as an assault man.
You go through being able to identify
27 tanks by just a silhouette.
- I did not find out that he was in the last three
until he came home and told me.
I was, I was shocked at first to hear,
but at the same time, no,
because that man always pulls everything off.
- One vote left.
The winner of "Survivor!"
(crowd cheering)
That's a million dollars in there.
That is your check, the real deal.
- It was unreal.
I was ecstatic.
I knew what it meant for my family, for my kids,
and their education, and just the comfortability
of knowing that we'll be okay,
and we're still gonna work,
and we're gonna still stay in our lane.
And that's the biggest thing in life
is be true to you.
(Ben whistling)
I guess the advice that I want to give a veteran is
don't give up.
Don't give up.
(kids chattering)
What?
Aww.
- What these people in their own testimony, their own words
are saying is, you know, I was suicidal
and I'm no longer suicidal.
- Andrew went from hardly being able
to drive home from work, forgetting his kids' names,
to the recovery road he's on now has landed him
at the Stanford School of Business Ignite program.
It was actually my idea to write the book.
You've gone through a terrible situation,
like so many have.
- Adam was the catalyst.
He was like, we're writing a book, dude.
You're gonna write a book.
- It's about getting the information out there
so that more doctors can come on board and participate.
- You could go back and say oh,
well I was able to make it through that because of this.
And then all of a sudden you have a blueprint
for anybody going through a hard time.
- Honestly I felt, you know, ethically and morally obligated
to share that information
because if I got that information
and I didn't disseminate it, then to me that
that's doing a disservice to everybody else
who is dealing with similar problems.
At least in the veteran community,
and now what's going on in the NFL,
like, you know about head trauma now.
It's kind of a household thing.
Our intent is to provide a hope, and a alternative
to what's currently being told as the status quo.
- I don't know where the idea came from,
but I did go to Salem Hospital,
went to the volunteer office, and I said to the lady,
I wanted to work with children.
And she said to me, well,
we have this neonatal intensive care unit
where babies are cuddled.
So we have what we call a cuddling program,
but we've never had a male do it before.
It's always been women.
And I said, well, I'd like to interview for that.
And it saved my life.
I was able to take sick babies,
whether they were addicted to drugs,
addicted to alcohol from the birth,
I would cuddle them and rock them to sleep.
And I can't tell you how it made me feel.
There was never, ever a baby
that I could not get to sleep.
My other pleasure in life are my five grandchildren,
my two daughters and their husbands.
I pray to God every single day.
- Just been a game changing experience
for me in my life, and for my family,
and you and Andrew are two of those people, so thank you.
We would always talked about going back to Boston,
so luckily a couple places you can go to school there,
and just thought well hey, why not apply to,
you know, Harvard and MIT?
And so I applied to Harvard Business School.
I applied to MIT's business school.
I applied to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government,
and I got immediately rejected by both Harvard institutions.
And I was wait listed at MIT.
So I bought a ticket from Seattle to Boston,
flew across the country
walked up to the admissions office unannounced,
and said, well, hey, you know, thank you very much for this,
but what do I need to do to get in now?
And then three months later,
I got an acceptance letter in my hand.
And then that fall, I swallowed my pride
and reapplied to the Kennedy School,
and was able to pursue dual master's degrees.
- If you had told me, when we started dating
that someday he was going to go to Harvard and MIT,
I would have laughed at you.
(dramatic music)
- So I went to the University of Texas at Arlington,
and I got an MBA, master's of business administration,
and finished that in about two and a half years.
I was just very proud that I was able
to accomplish you know, a dream that I had.
I was able to fulfill it,
despite all these hardships I've gone through.
And with all the support of my family,
my friends, and my now husband, I was able to push through.
And I was just so proud.
Anne Elisabeth Nickelson.
(crowd cheering)
- My outlook is joyous.
He's better now than he ever has been.
I'm, I have goosebumps.
- A buddy of mine, he said hey,
would you like to start a foundation?
Don or Andrew and help kids in the community,
especially in pediatric oncology.
I says, yeah, that'd be great.
You know, and honor Andrew, that'd be awesome.
So we started the Rypien Foundation,
just with the sense of making the quality of care
and their quality of life a little bit easier
as they're going through it.
The outcome, we don't know.
Statistics say create an environment where they're inspired,
they can battle this disease,
and they can come out the other end.
We bought kid cars that kids can put their IV poles in,
so that they don't have to be quarantined in their rooms.
We funded our last major project two years ago.
And it's the Andrew Rypien School.
Three, four, five, six, seven.
Seven, yes, seven.
Good job, all the way to the fish.
- I had a ton of support, you know?
I couldn't have done it on my own.
My wife's awesome.
Did more than anybody, and she held it all together,
and she just woke up every day and just did her best.
And I can't believe how strong she is.
* Pocket full of posy
* Ashes, ashes, we all fall
When I'm with Elise, I feel like part of my purpose
is to help people like her,
is to help put a smile on her face.
Some of my teammates and I talked about
being physical therapists when we grew up.
It just kind of stuck with me.
It was something that God had put a fire in my heart
for that, and a passion.
And he never really took it away.
I knew that that was the end goal,
heading to DPT school and get my doctorate.
- It's a building block of health
that you need to be aware of, and for me,
what I really want to say is thank you
for everyone that's got me here,
everyone that's helped me get here.
And that there are answers,
and you gotta really be out there and search for them.
You're worth it, and I have an obligation
to share this story that way.
(emotional music)
It's the most important thing is to pay it forward.
- The only thing I would tell people is
today is the first day of the rest of your life.
- 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 gonna have a ripple effect
that you probably aren't gonna be able to understand,
but by being on here, things are gonna
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 a beautiful thing.
(emotional music)
* Can you hear my voice this time *
* This is my fight song
* Take back my life song
* Prove I'm all right song
* My power's turned on
* Starting right now I'll be strong *
* I'll play my fight song
* And I don't really care if nobody else believes *
* 'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me *
* Losin' friends and I'm chasin' sleep *
* Everybody's worried about me
* In too deep
* Say I'm in too deep
* In too deep
* And it's been two years and I miss my home *
* And there's a fire burning in my bones *
* I still believe
* Yeah I still believe
* And all those things I didn't say *
* Wrecking balls inside my brain *
* I will scream them loud tonight *
* Can you hear my voice this time *
* This is my fight song
* Take back my life song
* Prove I'm all right song
* My power's turned on
* Starting right now I'll be strong *
* I'll play my fight song
* And I don't really care if nobody else believes *
* 'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me *
* A lot of fight left in me
* Like a small boat
* On the ocean
* Sending big waves
* Into motion
* Like how a single word
* Can make a heart open
* I might only have one match
* But I can make an explosion
* My power's turned on
* Starting right now I'll be strong *
* I'll be strong
* I'll play my fight song
* And I don't really care if nobody else believes *
* 'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me *
* No I've still got a lot of fight left in me *
(emotional music)
(gentle piano music)
(dramatic music)