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Speaker 1: Today's a day that hits me like a ton of bricks.

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Speaker 1: It hits me in a way that it's really difficult

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Speaker 1: to put into words. It's a thousand cuts across my heart.

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Speaker 1: It's swimming through a river of glass in my mind,

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Speaker 1: and it's being tied to a cinder block, being drowned

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Speaker 1: in a sea of tragedy and sorrow. And that's what

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Speaker 1: Memorial Day is for me, because as I imagine all

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Speaker 1: of my close friends and teammates that have died over

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Speaker 1: the last twenty plus years in the g WATT, it's

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Speaker 1: the memory of those men and what they've meant to

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Speaker 1: me is inescapable as is their death. Now to compound that,

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Speaker 1: it's also profoundly impactful that I think about all of

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Speaker 1: my friends that have ultimately killed themselves as a result

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Speaker 1: of their experiences fighting for this country, and I look

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Speaker 1: at their tragic loss as almost identical or even more

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Speaker 1: catastrophic than the men who actually died on the battlefields.

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Speaker 1: And so, as I welcome today an individual on the show,

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Speaker 1: doctor Chris Free, I want you to realize that this

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Speaker 1: man has been personally responsible for my ability to manage

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Speaker 1: that sorrow and that heartache, and he hasn't just done

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Speaker 1: it for me, He's literally done it for hundreds of

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Speaker 1: other men women that are affiliated with fighting for your freedoms. So,

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Speaker 1: without further ado, I'm so privileged and honored to welcome Chris,

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Speaker 1: doctor Chris Free to the show today to discuss Memorial Day,

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Speaker 1: operator syndrome and what we can do to help our veterans.

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Speaker 2: So welcome Chris, Thank you, Thank you David. Great to

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Speaker 2: be here. Great to see you again and be continuing

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Speaker 2: this conversation we've been having now for man nine years,

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Speaker 2: ten years.

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Speaker 1: Going up about nine about in twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 2: Yep, yea.

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Speaker 1: Before we jump into all the aspects of the impacts,

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Speaker 1: the specific medical and behavioral health impacts on veterans, and

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Speaker 1: your expertise on managing, treating and we're helping guys work

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Speaker 1: through those coaching them. How does Memorial Day impact you

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Speaker 1: and what does it make you feel? Because I know

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Speaker 1: you have some deep ties to within your family as well.

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Speaker 2: I remember my great great great great great grandfather Brocklebank,

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Speaker 2: who was killed in the literally in the fifteen hundreds

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Speaker 2: in the King Philip Indian War. His progeny, my great

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Speaker 2: grandfather served in the Battle of San Juan Hill in

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Speaker 2: Cuba in eighteen ninety eight, and he lived, survived that battle,

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Speaker 2: came home, and I knew him. He lived to be

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Speaker 2: almost one hundred years old, so I knew him when

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Speaker 2: I was fourteen years old. He died when I was

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Speaker 2: about fourteen, so I knew him quite well as a

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Speaker 2: child and knew his story. And it was a profound

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Speaker 2: impact on me, not just his service, but how he

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Speaker 2: was received and helped when he came home to back

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Speaker 2: to the US after the immediately after the war. And

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Speaker 2: I don't know how deep you want to go onto

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Speaker 2: those stories, but the essence of it is is he

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Speaker 2: was not doing well. None of the men were. They

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Speaker 2: all had mosquito borne illnesses. And they were dumped at

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Speaker 2: a hastily built camp up at the tip of Long Island,

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Speaker 2: and they were all sick with mosquito born illnesses. And

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Speaker 2: it was this muddy field. It was a national disgrace.

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Speaker 2: The President the United States went up to see what

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Speaker 2: was going on there, and to the end of his life,

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Speaker 2: my great grandfather always said that it was a civilian

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Speaker 2: woman who saved his life who went up. A wealthy

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Speaker 2: woman from New York City went up in her horse

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Speaker 2: drawn carriage with her butler, picked up four or five

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Speaker 2: six guy it was five or six guys, took them

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Speaker 2: to her home in the city and nursed them back

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Speaker 2: to health for six or seven weeks, and then gave

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Speaker 2: them train fair to get home to wherever their home was.

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Speaker 2: And so that was at a time when soldiers were

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Speaker 2: we're taken care of by civilians. There was a civilian

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Speaker 2: contribution to that, a recognition of a civilian duty to

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Speaker 2: honor and take care of and help out our veterans.

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Speaker 2: And I think we've lost that a little bit today.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we thank service members for their service on airplanes,

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Speaker 2: we do some fairly wrote kabuki things here and there.

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Speaker 2: But I do hope more Americans are thinking this month

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Speaker 2: and this this Memorial Day, are thinking about those who

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Speaker 2: made the sacrifices and the ultimate sacrifice on their behalf,

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Speaker 2: because I think it gets lost in the in the

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Speaker 2: barbecues and the and the social events too often. I'm sorry,

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Speaker 2: go ahead, Well, We're just going to add My father

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Speaker 2: was a Vietnam veteran, and so I grew up. He

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Speaker 2: was a physician, not a combatant, but he was in

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Speaker 2: the Air Force, and so he was in Vietnam, and

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Speaker 2: I think sixty eight, nineteen sixty eight, and so in

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Speaker 2: the early seventies I grew up, you know, as an

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Speaker 2: adolescent kind of in the shadow of that war, his

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Speaker 2: perspectives on it. I knew many of the Vietnamese I

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Speaker 2: don't even know what to refer to, how to describe it.

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Speaker 2: There was a large Vietnamese expat community in Columbia, Missouri,

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Speaker 2: at the University of Missouri that my father kind of

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Speaker 2: engaged with to help them with their graduate studies, and

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Speaker 2: so I had an awareness of that. And my father

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Speaker 2: helped a man named mister Long who was working on

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Speaker 2: a dissertation and something I don't even know what. But

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Speaker 2: in return, mister Long babysat for us. He was our babysitter,

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Speaker 2: and he was our favorite babysitter. However, tragically, he went

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Speaker 2: back to Vietnam in nineteen seventy five after the fall

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Speaker 2: of Saigon, hoping to find his wife and his two

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Speaker 2: children and to bring them to the US, and he

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Speaker 2: was scooped up and summarily executed by the North Vietnamese government.

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Speaker 2: And so that had a profound impact on my childhood.

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Speaker 2: So part of my story is that was that became

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Speaker 2: my why, that became my goal. I've never served. I

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Speaker 2: was raised primarily in a Quaker faith with a kind

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Speaker 2: of a conscientious objector encouragement. But I went to graduate

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Speaker 2: school in nineteen eighty seven to become a political psychologist

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Speaker 2: with the goal of working with veterans.

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Speaker 1: I mean specifically, that's that's exactly what you wanted to do.

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Speaker 1: And what was it was it to? I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: you know, I think I we all. I think if

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Speaker 1: people take a moment and they they allow their lives

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Speaker 1: to kind of be pressed on, put on plause or

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Speaker 1: all their own problems, their own turmoils, and they stop

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Speaker 1: and they engage in you know, these really intense stories

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Speaker 1: about sacrifice and dying and overseas, and you know, and

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Speaker 1: you process the numbers and you process the impact of war,

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Speaker 1: and it's uh the tributaries of suffering that it it

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Speaker 1: ensue that ensue from it. You know, I think it does.

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Speaker 1: It certainly sparks a generational idea to go back in

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Speaker 1: and to serve, and it sparks other people to acknowledge

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Speaker 1: that support. But you know, to really lend to ignite

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Speaker 1: a desire in a career in your field, why why

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Speaker 1: was it?

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Speaker 2: Like?

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Speaker 1: What what about did you think that you were going

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Speaker 1: to able to do for for vets?

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Speaker 2: My father talked about the psychological cost of war a

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Speaker 2: lot when I was a child, and I'm never really

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Speaker 2: sure how much of his own experience he was talking

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Speaker 2: about he but he certainly talked out kind of the

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Speaker 2: toll on men's psyche who'd been to war and come home.

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Speaker 2: And so nineteen eighty seven, when I started graduate school,

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Speaker 2: I had never heard of PTSD. It was not a

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Speaker 2: it was a disorder that had just been added to

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Speaker 2: the psychiatric nomenclature in nineteen eighty so it's a brand

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Speaker 2: new disorder. There was almost no research on it. I

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Speaker 2: learned about it early in graduate school, and I was like,

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Speaker 2: I want to you know, that's what I want to do.

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Speaker 2: I want to study that. I want to get involved

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Speaker 2: in that. But I would say even before that, just

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Speaker 2: had a sense that there were profound effects on the soul,

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Speaker 2: which I today would refer to as existential. Existential you know,

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Speaker 2: thoughts and concerns that have powerful impacts, not necessarily psychiatric

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Speaker 2: symptoms even and I think that maybe something we could

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Speaker 2: get into today. But I don't like the idea of

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Speaker 2: turning every everything into a psychiatric symptom. You know, you

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Speaker 2: have grief about the men you lost, the brothers, the

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Speaker 2: comrades you lost. I don't view that as necessarily a

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Speaker 2: psychiatric symptom. You have thoughts about, you know, humanity and

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Speaker 2: the horrors you've seen, the you know, the incredible feats

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Speaker 2: of bravery and honor that you've seen, and you know

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Speaker 2: all of that. I don't think of that as psychiatric

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Speaker 2: symptoms necessarily. We talk about shame, guilt, survivor's guilt. The

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Speaker 2: phrase moral injuries is often used today. Are those psychiatric symptoms?

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Speaker 2: I'm not so sure that they are. Maybe maybe there's

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Speaker 2: a then diagram overlap, and maybe they kind of move

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Speaker 2: into it for many many people. But I don't think

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Speaker 2: it's as simple as as we've come to believe. And

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Speaker 2: so maybe just to put this right here at the

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Speaker 2: very beginning of our conversation. While I am considered by

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Speaker 2: many to be a so called expert in PTSD, and

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Speaker 2: I've done published hundreds of research studies on PTSD, I

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Speaker 2: think we have way over relied on this diagnosis to

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Speaker 2: the detriment of so many other things. And in part

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Speaker 2: that detriment is about once we identify you as having PTSD,

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Speaker 2: we think we immediately have the answer for what's needed,

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Speaker 2: and we prescribe you and it's like it's like a

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Speaker 2: depressant medication, psychiatric medications. We assign you to therapy or

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Speaker 2: we refer you to therapy, and then we kind of

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Speaker 2: stop there. We don't test your blood for hormonal levels.

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Speaker 2: We don't necessarily do a sleep study. We don't necessarily

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Speaker 2: go deep on the chronic pain that you're likely to

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Speaker 2: be experiencing in your body. We don't necessarily ask you

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Speaker 2: or talk to you or work with you about perceptual

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Speaker 2: impairments to vision and hearing balance. We may not we

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Speaker 2: may not go deep or even at all into cognitive dysfunctions, headaches,

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Speaker 2: things related to traumatic brain injury. And so maybe I'll

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Speaker 2: take a breath there. That's kind of where that's kind

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Speaker 2: of where I'm at today, and that that's kind of

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Speaker 2: where I started early on in my career.

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Speaker 1: It's well, I mean, when you think about when I

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Speaker 1: hear the term PTSD, and and then I think about

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Speaker 1: the iliad, or I think about the stories from World

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Speaker 1: War One and shell shocker, I think about you know,

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Speaker 1: similar uh stories from the Battle of the art ends.

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Speaker 1: You know, these ideas within combat have been are eternal, right,

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Speaker 1: there is there as old ass combat, as old as

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Speaker 1: combat itself. And so what I what what I love

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Speaker 1: about how your assessments have emerged. And we'll get to

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Speaker 1: the specificity of of how that took place with your

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Speaker 1: coaching and your counseling. But it's like, it's like and

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Speaker 1: this is something that I've really been thinking a lot

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Speaker 1: about over the last you know, a couple of years,

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Speaker 1: in particular, as after I lost one of my closest friends,

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Speaker 1: Dan Cirillo, died of a heart attack at fifty, I

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Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, why is my life so

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Speaker 1: perpetually infused with death? And I get it, I understand

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Speaker 1: that death is an inevitability for us all, but we

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Speaker 1: really have this concept, this idea, this culture of death

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Speaker 1: that we exist in it and it's relative to the

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Speaker 1: training we go through, the mission sets that we go on,

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Speaker 1: the experience of war itself, what takes place afterwards around it,

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Speaker 1: you know, this culture of death. And I was wondering

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Speaker 1: if if you could just you know, talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about that as as you know, you reference that

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Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the subsequent challenges that that

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Speaker 1: we we suffer from are are not definitive psychiatric diagnosis

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Speaker 1: or or they can't be shoved into some type of

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Speaker 1: of of paragraph in the D S M. Five or

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Speaker 1: whatever it is. These are These are much broader and

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Speaker 1: and that culture of death is is a much larger thing.

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Speaker 1: Could you could you just talk about that a little

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Speaker 1: bit and then perhaps lead into what you learned when

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Speaker 1: after you actually let's just talk about that first.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Well, can I read a Can I read

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Speaker 2: a sentence first? Please? And this is this is from

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Speaker 2: a book that I wrote last year that you that

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Speaker 2: you know well, to my brothers. This is the quote

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Speaker 2: to my brothers, the season of death is again upon us,

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Speaker 2: and once again it is incumbent on us to thwart

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Speaker 2: its grasp. Those are your words, brother, you wrote though,

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Speaker 2: would you wrote at it the in the forward to

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Speaker 2: the book. And I think this has been I mean,

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Speaker 2: we are talking about a generation of men and women

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Speaker 2: when we talk about the global War on Terror, and

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Speaker 2: specifically about military special operators who have had you know,

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Speaker 2: many of whom have had ten twenty years in the war.

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Speaker 2: But of course not only not only operators and I

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Speaker 2: use the word operator a little bit loosely. We have intelligence, paramilitary,

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Speaker 2: we have SWI, swift boat you know, operators, we have

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Speaker 2: EOD technicians, we have all of those who served in

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Speaker 2: the combat arms and did most tours of duty and

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Speaker 2: trained with you know, anything that exploded and made loud booms.

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Speaker 2: And so we've we've had a generation of men and

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Speaker 2: women at war for over twenty years now, which is unprecedented,

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Speaker 2: a word I don't like to hear very often, but

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Speaker 2: in this case, it's actually true, and it's probably true,

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Speaker 2: certainly true for Americans, and it's probably true for you know,

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Speaker 2: if we look back through the history the ages of

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Speaker 2: our of humankind. Twenty years at war is just you know,

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Speaker 2: it's just a massive thing. So that the level and

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Speaker 2: the amount of death that you and your comrades have

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Speaker 2: seen have been a part of training deaths, combat deaths,

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Speaker 2: and then the deaths of men and women who died,

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Speaker 2: you know, after they came home, after they were done

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Speaker 2: with their service. Some of that is suicide, a lot

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Speaker 2: of suicides. We've had far more suicides than we've had

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Speaker 2: combat deaths in the Global War on Terror. Or we're

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Speaker 2: losing six thousand American veterans a year, which is just

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Speaker 2: an ultimate tragedy. We're losing people to substance abuse, We're

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Speaker 2: losing people to just know Dan Cirillo, he died of

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Speaker 2: a massive heart attack. I mean, then you think about

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Speaker 2: the incredible level of stress and anguish and physical pain

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Speaker 2: he had been living with up to that point. Can

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Speaker 2: we call that that death up? You know, and it's

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Speaker 2: you know, a result of his combat I you know,

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Speaker 2: I don't think I don't think you could argue against that.

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Speaker 2: We were at a funeral a few years ago Tyler

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Speaker 2: Black died after died of a blood clot after a

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Speaker 2: routine knee surgery. But you go, well, that's not combat related,

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Speaker 2: except that it was his twentieth orthopedic surgery. You know,

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Speaker 2: he rolled the dice so many times, and his orthopedic

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Speaker 2: injuries certainly came from his as military career. So the

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Speaker 2: death is ever present, and it's continuing. We're losing men

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Speaker 2: every every day, every week, every month, every month, I

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Speaker 2: hear I get a phone call from from a friend,

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Speaker 2: from a come from somebody I've talked to work with.

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Speaker 2: No well, and they're calling because they're at a service

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Speaker 2: or they're driving to or from a service. I think

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Speaker 2: twice in the last ten years I've called you randomly

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Speaker 2: out of the blue and you were at a service

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Speaker 2: or I want one. You were in you were in

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Speaker 2: the funeral progression in the funeral, you know, progression for

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Speaker 2: Scottie Wurtz, and another time you had just come out

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Speaker 2: of a service for for Dave Hall who had taken

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Speaker 2: his life. It's just zever present and it's massive.

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Speaker 1: There was a point where you had decided that you

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Speaker 1: weren't going to work with the VA anymore, and you

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Speaker 1: kind of moved away from them, and then you started

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Speaker 1: coming back you wanted to work. Can you can you

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Speaker 1: describe kind of that those transition points, one walking away

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Speaker 1: from the VA and then two the coming back to

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Speaker 1: wanting to serve veterans again.

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Speaker 2: Well, okay, so I started. I finished my degree in

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, and my first job was right there

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Speaker 2: at the VA in Charleston, South Carolina, not at Queen Vers,

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Speaker 2: South Carolina. I was a full time clinician there and

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Speaker 2: a PTSD clinic for seven years. A little bit of research.

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Speaker 2: At about the seven year mark, I applied for and

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Speaker 2: was awarded a federal NIH research grant to do more research,

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Speaker 2: and that shifted the allocation of my time more towards research,

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Speaker 2: although not one hundred percent towards research. So for the

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Speaker 2: next eight years I continued to be a part time

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Speaker 2: therapist and largely doing research related to trauma and PTSD.

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Speaker 2: So I had fifteen years at the VA and I

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Speaker 2: left in two thousand and six. And at the time

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Speaker 2: I left and the reasons I left, a lot of

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Speaker 2: it's been chronicled in a book titled Wounding Warriors. How

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Speaker 2: policy makes is making veterans sicker and poorer, and that

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Speaker 2: that really explains why I left. There's several chapters in

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Speaker 2: the book that just little bitter about my own experience.

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Speaker 2: But much of my research was showing the ways in

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Speaker 2: which the VA itself was harming veterans at the policy level.

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Speaker 2: So we have policies that were harmful. We had, you know,

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Speaker 2: just hr policies at the level of every employee where

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Speaker 2: accountability was not was not good. I had colleagues that

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Speaker 2: I worked with immediately around me who were phenomenal, and

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Speaker 2: so I want to give give that shout out. I

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Speaker 2: worked with great, terrific people. I loved working with my patients,

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Speaker 2: but the system was brutal, and it was so much bureaucracy,

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Speaker 2: so much waste of time, so much nonsense, and I

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Speaker 2: could see it. It was just it was harmful to

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Speaker 2: the to the veterans who are our patients. And at

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Speaker 2: the point where my research was coming under scrutiny by

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Speaker 2: Central Office of the VA and the powerful machine that

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Speaker 2: the PTSD industry is, and it is a powerful machine.

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Speaker 2: There's a small cabal of so called scientists who run

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Speaker 2: the PTSD national centers. They hold a lot of power

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Speaker 2: in terms of their immediate budgets, but they also are

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Speaker 2: decision makers who make decisions about what treatments are going

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Speaker 2: to be allowed in the VA, what research is going

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Speaker 2: to be supported. And although I was very successful, I've

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Speaker 2: got hundreds of research. I got a thing yesterday from

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Speaker 2: GPS scholar congratulating me that I'm the twenty eighth ranked

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Speaker 2: all time PTSD researcher in terms of my research all

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Speaker 2: time ever.

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Speaker 1: Congratulations.

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Speaker 2: Well give a shit about that. But my point is

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Speaker 2: I was an insider from one perspective, and at the

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Speaker 2: same time they were slapping me. I was being slapped

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Speaker 2: around for questioning the system, and I was being threatened.

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Speaker 2: I had had a very powerful colleague who's at one

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Speaker 2: of the leaders of one of the national centers, who

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Speaker 2: called me said, if you publish this paper, well we'll

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Speaker 2: throw you under the bus. Your scientific He literally threatened

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Speaker 2: my career. Your career will be over. We'll make sure

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Speaker 2: you never get grants, that your papers are never never accepted,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. And that's when I decided to leave. And

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Speaker 2: I by leaving, I was then able to speak because

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Speaker 2: I had had a basically a block. The VA had

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Speaker 2: blocked me from being allowed to speak to the media

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Speaker 2: and the less I had permission from them, and that

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Speaker 2: required having a PR handler name was Tanya, present at

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Speaker 2: every interview, and she had She had the anointed ability

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Speaker 2: to strike questions that were posed to me by journalists

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Speaker 2: as well as the ability the power to strike any

347
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Speaker 2: answer I gave after the fact. And that's when it

348
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Speaker 2: is just untenable. So I left two thousand and six,

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Speaker 2: and I probably was away from being very active in

350
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Speaker 2: veterans research for about eight years and then and then

351
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Speaker 2: slowly came back, not in a research capacity. I came back,

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Speaker 2: and I say came back. I made some friends in Houston.

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Speaker 2: You know, I had a job at Baylor Colls of Medicine,

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Speaker 2: and there was a small foundation there called Quick Reaction Foundation,

355
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Speaker 2: and so it was set up four operators. By it

356
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Speaker 2: was by operators for operators, not a specific branch. And

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Speaker 2: so through that, just through going to some of their

358
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Speaker 2: events and meeting with guys, I started meeting and talking

359
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Speaker 2: with guys who weren't doing well, and I, you know,

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Speaker 2: I think maybe a part of the story is even

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Speaker 2: at that point, I still had this arrogant idea that, oh,

362
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Speaker 2: I'll be able to help these guys. It's probably pist.

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Speaker 2: We'll figure that out, We'll get them help, and they'll

364
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Speaker 2: be doing they'll be doing better. You know what. Guess

365
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Speaker 2: what it was? Not PTSD. No, that's not what they

366
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:10,479
Speaker 2: were struggling with. The things they were saying were very

367
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Speaker 2: vague complaints. I don't feel well, I don't feel right.

368
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Speaker 2: Something's wrong with me. I don't know what it is.

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Speaker 2: I can't put my finger on it. Most of these

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Speaker 2: guys had recently separated or retired. They were late thirties,

371
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Speaker 2: early forties, and over the course of several months, maybe

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Speaker 2: six months or so, it became trial and errors. I

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Speaker 2: was like, holy cow, they don't have PTSD. Not even close.

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Speaker 2: No fear reactivity, no avoidance. Yeah, some nightmares at times,

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Speaker 2: but not the debilitating nightmares that you see in the

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Speaker 2: movies or that you hear about. They weren't bothered by fireworks.

377
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Speaker 2: They were not avoiding things related to military service. They

378
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Speaker 2: could talk about their experiences very easily without getting you know,

379
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Speaker 2: the rapid physiological arousal on such. I guess what they

380
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,960
Speaker 2: did have and you and you know because as we

381
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 2: found it with you as well. They had low testosterone.

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Speaker 2: They had sleep app Yeah, every single one of them

383
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Speaker 2: had sleep app they had So these are things I

384
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Speaker 2: was not prepared for. I was not expecting these in

385
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Speaker 2: young fit men. And they certainly all had chronic pain, headaches,

386
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 2: cognitive impairments. And the big whammy is that we really

387
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 2: came to appreciate was traumatic brain injury. Yes, and none

388
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Speaker 2: of them had been blown up per se. They didn't

389
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Speaker 2: have the big, you know, the signal event where they

390
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Speaker 2: were in an ied explosion and were out, you know,

391
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Speaker 2: unconscious for an hour or so. It was from training,

392
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Speaker 2: last exposures, breaching training, shoulder fire, rockets training, the diving,

393
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Speaker 2: the thousands and thousands of rounds of rifle fire and

394
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 2: just came to realize that we've injured these men, and

395
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 2: these men, mostly men, but some women as well in

396
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 2: ways we didn't even realize. And then a year or

397
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Speaker 2: two after that point, when I'm still struggling to understanding

398
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 2: of this is brilliant paper came out in twenty sixteen.

399
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Speaker 2: It gave a name to the type of brain injury

400
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:26,879
Speaker 2: that blasts cause. And this is still not on the

401
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 2: radar for very many people, including VA clinicians. But blast

402
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 2: exposures don't cause the same kind of damage that a

403
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 2: concussion causes. They have a shearing effect, goes through the

404
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 2: soft tissue, including the brain, and they scar the glial cells.

405
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 2: So this was named interface astro glial scarring. Glial cells

406
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:55,120
Speaker 2: are the support cells in the central nervous system. They

407
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 2: hold the neurons in place, they insulate them, they protect them,

408
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 2: they carry out the toxins, and their scar they're messed up,

409
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 2: they're not working properly. So we have this constellation of

410
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 2: physiological injuries that lead to a whole range of impairments

411
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 2: in functioning. But it's the physiological and I think that's

412
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Speaker 2: what my entire field of psychology and psychiatry has completely

413
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 2: missed the boat on for since nineteen eighty or since

414
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,400
Speaker 2: forever since World War One, probably when we probably had

415
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 2: it right when we called it shell shock. That was

416
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 2: probably the vast most appropriate conceptualization of what was happening

417
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:41,360
Speaker 2: at that time, and we kind of went backwards since then.

418
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Speaker 2: Now we're coming back around, I hope.

419
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Speaker 1: When how many guys had you worked with, you know,

420
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Speaker 1: and overwhelming majority of the individuals that you've had these

421
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:59,200
Speaker 1: talks with, you know, can you describe you know, how many?

422
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,440
Speaker 1: And then the wave that started approaching you and and

423
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Speaker 1: what you started when you finally started to go, oh

424
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Speaker 1: my god, there's patterns, there's a pattern to this. There

425
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,360
Speaker 1: it's and then what did you do and who did

426
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Speaker 1: you do it with? To really start to open up,

427
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: Oh wow, we need to talk to a cardiologist. We

428
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 1: need to talk to neurologists, we need to talk to

429
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 1: we need to talk to endochronologists. When when did that

430
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: kind of tipping point happen?

431
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 2: For you?

432
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Speaker 1: Forgive the interruption, I just wanted to acknowledge one of

433
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: our core sponsors, Firecracker Farms. My good friend Alex and

434
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Speaker 1: his family have put their heart and soul into developing

435
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Speaker 1: what I consider to be the best hot salt there

436
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437
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Speaker 1: I enjoy my food every morning the evening when I

438
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Speaker 1: eat my steak and my chicken of this product is

439
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Speaker 1: one of the best that I've ever had. And I

440
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Speaker 1: know that every single shaker that comes to you through

441
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Speaker 1: the mail is made with love and sincerity and also

442
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: just an overwhelming commitment to veterans. What you don't know

443
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: is how much Alex supports Veterans and Operation three hundred,

444
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Speaker 1: as well as other charities out there. He is a

445
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Speaker 1: wonderful human being and he really truly cares about vets

446
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Speaker 1: and those who have given all for this country. So

447
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Speaker 1: please visit Firecracker dot Farm. Type in your promo code

448
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449
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450
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Speaker 1: you Alex and all of you at Firecracker Farms.

451
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, at first it was just me having informal

452
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 2: conversations with some guys over coffee, over a beer, over pizza,

453
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: and then is they started to feel better and do better,

454
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 2: then it was their friends. So it was one hundred

455
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:10,520
Speaker 2: percent word of mouth, and that's how we met right Tyler. Yeah,

456
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 2: I met you through Tyler, and I met Tyler through

457
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 2: through this group. And so it was all word of mouth.

458
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: And I wasn't charging people, I wasn't filing paperwork, I

459
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 2: wasn't billing anybody, and I'm not in any command structure.

460
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 2: So what happened pretty quickly was I was talking to

461
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 2: a lot of guys who had never really opened up

462
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 2: to anybody. In part, I was safe. I was not

463
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 2: within the system, and I had a credibility you know,

464
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 2: from from having you know, from my from my academic work,

465
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 2: I had some credibility that that that lended itself to this.

466
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 2: And so I'd say over the last decade, I've I've

467
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 2: probably worked with three hundred three fifty individuals operate, mostly

468
00:30:56,320 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: operators and and some related you know, swick E, O, D,

469
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 2: S PARA military. And then in addition to that, I've

470
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 2: I've worked more formally with about three hundred private defense contractors,

471
00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 2: a majority of whom are either operators where their former

472
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 2: law enforcement SWAT types. Also, a lot of private defense

473
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 2: contractors were are were Iraqi or Afghani interpreters or cultural liaisons.

474
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 2: So I had the privilege to do quite a bit

475
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 2: of work with maybe I don't know, forty or fifty

476
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 2: of them, some still in their home country, some some

477
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 2: in the US. And now I would say the last

478
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 2: five years some of my consultations have been with law

479
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 2: enforcement firefighters, and so the operator syndrome framework that I

480
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 2: guess we haven't even mentioned that word yet. Really it

481
00:31:56,240 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 2: relates to them as well, right, And so some of

482
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 2: the some of the law enforcement tactical, law enforcement, especially

483
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 2: swat dea tactical, FBI tactical, but even cotrol, patrol, police,

484
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 2: and certainly firefighters have a similar constellation of TBI. Hormonal disruption,

485
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 2: sleep disruption, pain, headaches, cognitive impairments, psychological addiction issues, and

486
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 2: these all go together. They're very physiological. And for the

487
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 2: first responder community, we see the same thing as we

488
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 2: do in military and veterans. It's oh, it's hit that

489
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 2: big red easy button that says PTSD, we go boom,

490
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 2: and then now we're done. Now we can just give

491
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 2: pills and therapy ills and that's it, and that's it.

492
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 2: And so in twenty so, I guess, just to say

493
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 2: a little bit more about kind of the progression of things.

494
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 2: One of the other things that I started doing probably

495
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 2: circus twenty fifteen sixteen seventeen, was starting to talk to

496
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 2: and meet with some of the other medical providers in

497
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 2: the community. There was a really good group of psychologists

498
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 2: and social workers out of Virginia Beach working with the Seals.

499
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 2: And I mean they were Navy, they were Navy naval

500
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 2: officers providing mental health services, and so I got to

501
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 2: know some of them and learn from them. They even

502
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 2: started referring to some of their active guys, so guys

503
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,200
Speaker 2: that they didn't feel like they could help for a

504
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 2: variety of reasons, fitness for duty being one of them.

505
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 2: Everybody knows you know a soldier that says, hey, I've

506
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 2: got an issue. They're going to be taken off the line,

507
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 2: they're going to be pulled out of training, they're going

508
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 2: to not go on the next deployment potentially, so they

509
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 2: don't talk. So I got a handful of referrals there,

510
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 2: some from Fort Bragg. So when I say I've worked

511
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 2: with probably three hundred and three fIF the operators, that

512
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 2: includes a lot of active duty and it includes Canadian operators.

513
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 2: I've done got a fair bit of work there. So

514
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 2: what happened was is I was just in a learning

515
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 2: steep learning curve. What emerged was this pattern that I

516
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 2: kept seeing over and over and over again. It was

517
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:29,840
Speaker 2: just every single guy had similar TBI low testosterone sleep apnea.

518
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:32,880
Speaker 2: And now it's just like you assume it. You assume it.

519
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 2: It's inevitable given the type of training, the damage that

520
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:42,759
Speaker 2: blasted caused, the damage, that circadian disruption of working at night,

521
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 2: traveling across time zones, the sleep deprivation, the physicality on

522
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 2: the body of running, rocking, diving, jumping, falling, tactical driving.

523
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 2: Even it's inevitable.

524
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 1: You know for me, I mean as I as we

525
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 1: our friendship grew and grew, and you know, I kept

526
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: referring people to you, We kept having the conversations, and

527
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,479
Speaker 1: then you know, that really magic moment was when when

528
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 1: you and a look and the other authors of the

529
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 1: paper kind of put this thing in and wrapped it

530
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: together under that term operators syndrome. Was was was that, Uh,

531
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: it wasn't an it doesn't seem like it was probably

532
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: an aha moment, but it was. It was it a

533
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 1: seminal moment for you because it was a way to

534
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: be able to discuss this now that would potentially make

535
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: sense for those who were suffering.

536
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:54,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, there was no name for this, but it

537
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 2: was a clear pattern that we were seeing over and

538
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 2: over again. And to reinforce an important point here, it's

539
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 2: very physiological and all of our physiological systems in our body,

540
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 2: you know, our neuro neurological, our nervous system, our endocrine system,

541
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 2: our metabolic system, our skeletal, muscular system, all of our

542
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: systems are connected. They're all working together. So you affect

543
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 2: one system, you're affecting every other system in some way.

544
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 2: And what became really clear was this fit the pattern

545
00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 2: of a syndrome, meaning it's not just one diagnosis. We

546
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 2: can't just go PTSD and stop it's PTSD. They are

547
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 2: a little bit more prominent on the psychological side of

548
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 2: things with depression, anger, general anxiety. When we put all

549
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 2: this together and seeing it in operators, which was really

550
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: the only group I was directly working with at the time,

551
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 2: the phrase operator syndrome just came into my mind and

552
00:36:57,560 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 2: it was it was just what I had, what I

553
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 2: was calling it in my head, and I met other

554
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 2: people along the way. There were others that had that

555
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 2: that had a similar phrase or the same phrase. Kirk

556
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 2: Parsley who'd been working with seals for years. In his head,

557
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 2: he was calling it seal syndrome. We put this together

558
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 2: in a descriptive paper that had originally been something that

559
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 2: lived on my laptop for for years. And it was

560
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 2: something that at first it was a one page document

561
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:31,799
Speaker 2: that I probably gave to you and said, here's a

562
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 2: sleep man, you read this and we'll talk about it.

563
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 2: And it has some of these things in there. And

564
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 2: as I was learning, I just kept adding to it.

565
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 2: And then after several years, somebody that I showed it

566
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,319
Speaker 2: to said, man, you ought to publish this and share

567
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 2: it with everybody, share it with the world. So we did. We,

568
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 2: you know, some of the people I was talking and

569
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 2: working with, we took it. We fixed it up. There

570
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:56,879
Speaker 2: was some you know, the team of authorship on it

571
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 2: included included one operator who was in a doctoral program

572
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 2: a neuroscience PhD program at the University of Texas. Helped out.

573
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 2: He's now in Congress. Former Navy seal Morgan Latrelle, who

574
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 2: you know, well, he was a co author on this

575
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 2: and that got published in twenty twenty. And you know,

576
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 2: one of the things that happens for us nerds and

577
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 2: science is you publish a paper, and usually you kind

578
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 2: of forget about it and you go on to the

579
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 2: next paper, and you hope some other scientists read your paper.

580
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 2: And what happened in twenty twenty for me was completely unanticipated. Unexpected.

581
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 2: It essentially did the equivalent of going viral in the

582
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,359
Speaker 2: operator community suddenly. I think in the first three months,

583
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 2: I got about four hundred requests for the paper, and

584
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 2: so eventually we just took the PDF and we put

585
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 2: it up. It lives on the Internet in a variety

586
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,359
Speaker 2: of places. Anybody that wants to see it can find it.

587
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 2: And because it's just a simple description, descriptive paper, it's

588
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 2: pretty easy to read anybody. You don't need there's not

589
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 2: a lot of medical jargon in it. You can download it,

590
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:15,080
Speaker 2: read it, and share it and educate your family, yourself,

591
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:18,359
Speaker 2: your own doctors who probably don't know how to how

592
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:22,479
Speaker 2: to approach your complicated medical problems. And then it also

593
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 2: got picked up by law enforcement, firefighters, and so I

594
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:31,320
Speaker 2: was twenty twenty and then last year we published.

595
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 1: And let me just interrupt, the thing that really got

596
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:38,239
Speaker 1: me was, I mean, this was the seminal moment that

597
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: for us, it was like, oh my god, there's a

598
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: way to psychologically manage and label this perpetual sensation of

599
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:56,240
Speaker 1: low performance, right, our inability to operate at the level

600
00:39:56,280 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: we once operated. But it happened right in the middle.

601
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 2: Of COVID and.

602
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: So as soon as this thing the rest.

603
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,719
Speaker 2: Of the beginning same month that the world's shut down.

604
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, that's right. And so I believe that

605
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: that muted the potentiality of what this ultimately has been doing.

606
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:27,719
Speaker 1: But it's been this slow, gradual thing. And so could

607
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: you discuss that that the gradual nature of of it,

608
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 1: and maybe some of the challenges that you've confronted and

609
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,760
Speaker 1: what ultimately drove you to write the book and released

610
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: the book a year ago.

611
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:45,240
Speaker 2: Okay, well, yeah, I don't even where to start there.

612
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 2: We can talk about that for hours. One thing that

613
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 2: happened was I got a lot of a lot of messages.

614
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 2: A lot of people reached out to me. So I

615
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:58,319
Speaker 2: was getting a lot of validation. People were reaching out

616
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 2: to me, Oh, holy moly, this really this is me?

617
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 2: And I get that every time I present. I presented

618
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 2: last week over at Pearl Hicckham on Oahu and to

619
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:14,840
Speaker 2: a summit of Air Force senior enlisted Explosive Ordnance Disposal

620
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 2: technician c o DS talk for an hour. At the

621
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 2: break five five or six guys came up to me.

622
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 2: It was like, you just described me in my life.

623
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,879
Speaker 2: How did you know? I get that all the time,

624
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,240
Speaker 2: and in fact I may can I read as another

625
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 2: quote from the book, this is so emblematic of things.

626
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 2: So this is the book that that you and I wrote.

627
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 2: You wrote, you wrote a powerful forward to it. And

628
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 2: so this is a quote at the top of chapter

629
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:48,759
Speaker 2: one from Clay Jensen, a US Army Master sergeant retired

630
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 2: Special Operation Team seven Special Forces Groups CIA contractor. And

631
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 2: I won't read his whole whole quote, but this is

632
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,480
Speaker 2: what he said. Every time I see a new primary

633
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 2: doctor civilian, they're completely overwhelmed by the sheer number and

634
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 2: severity of the different medical issues I have. Nobody knows

635
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 2: how to treat me, completely different from any other patient

636
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 2: they've had. For over ten years, I struggled understand why

637
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 2: I am the way I am and to know what

638
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 2: was really wrong with me. Then I came across an

639
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 2: article on operator syndrome, and I was like, quote, holy shit,

640
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 2: I'm normal. Most quote. I went from feeling totally alone

641
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 2: to being part of the tribe again. And then I

642
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 2: put that at the start of the book just because

643
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 2: it's so emblematic. Guys are suffering in silence, They're suffering alone.

644
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 2: They think they're the only ones. There's this often, this

645
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 2: shame of all my brothers are crushing life. But I'm

646
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 2: sitting here in despair, in pain, with low testosterone, not sleeping,

647
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,760
Speaker 2: drinking too much, and I can't get my act together.

648
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 2: And but I can't tell anybody because it doesn't make

649
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 2: any sense. And so part of I think the message

650
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:09,320
Speaker 2: here is these physiological injuries are inevitable for combatants, for

651
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,719
Speaker 2: first responders, for anybody who has one of these high

652
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 2: risk professional careers, for you know, especially for multiple years,

653
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:19,759
Speaker 2: for decades.

654
00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:23,399
Speaker 1: Well, I think that the critical thing I also want

655
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: to bring up is that as as you have really

656
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: kind of taken this and run, and you know, obviously

657
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: there's been some negative reactions within the different units. You know,

658
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,359
Speaker 1: I think you've you've confronted multiple senior ranking people, right,

659
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: Is that is that correct?

660
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 2: What? What?

661
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 1: What was what was their points they were trying to

662
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: make to you?

663
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think I'll put it in terms

664
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 2: of COVID you had. You had a powerful guest on recently,

665
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:02,719
Speaker 2: doctor Robert Malone, who talked about the COVID, the way

666
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 2: in which the COVID narrative was presented, and anybody who

667
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:13,359
Speaker 2: criticized it, questioned it was silenced. They were chilled, they

668
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 2: were denounced. Uh, they were deplatformed, they were shadow banned,

669
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 2: they were excluded. Uh. And they were also you know,

670
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:26,359
Speaker 2: attacked in ad hominem ways. Their character were, you know,

671
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 2: their reputations were were gossiped about. And I've experienced all

672
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,560
Speaker 2: of that. I experienced all of that in the early

673
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 2: two thousands when I was still at the VA, with

674
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 2: my critique of the VA as a system, and and

675
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 2: and and again. You know, more recently with operator syndrome,

676
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 2: it's it's not been picked up by the VA broadly,

677
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:52,439
Speaker 2: although I'm starting to talk to people in the VA

678
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 2: who are listening, who are already who are using it.

679
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 2: I'll give a shout out to to Jane Adams at

680
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 2: Palo Alto Via who set up a program out there.

681
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 2: He's a psychologist and research director of their program treating

682
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 2: operators using this framework. Would be a good guest for

683
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 2: this show someday. I've given one invited presentation to one VA,

684
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:21,880
Speaker 2: the Orlando VA, their mental health program, just you know,

685
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 2: at a local level, just said would you come do

686
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:26,600
Speaker 2: a would you do a zoom presentation to us? Which

687
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 2: I did, And that's been about it. Wow, I've been

688
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 2: I won't say I've been harassed, but I've certainly been ignored.

689
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:38,439
Speaker 2: When I have had a couple of meetings, I've been

690
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 2: told that some of the leadership at the PA has

691
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:45,799
Speaker 2: said to me, pretty openly or pretty pretty frankly, we

692
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 2: don't think what you have to offer is meaningful. It's

693
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 2: really just PTSD. And anybody, any soldier who says they

694
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 2: don't have PTSD, they're in denial and so they're ignoring

695
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 2: the physiological aspect of things. I did present at a

696
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 2: closed door meeting of one of the large foundations for operators,

697
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 2: and a retired officer who had previously had three stars

698
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:19,200
Speaker 2: on his shoulder stood up and denounced me. He said,

699
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:21,800
Speaker 2: and this was just a year ago. He started by saying,

700
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:25,280
Speaker 2: I have not read your book, and then he proceeded

701
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 2: to tell me all the reasons he thought my ideas

702
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 2: were dangerous and wrong and off base, and really what

703
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 2: his concerns came down to is worried that it would

704
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 2: hurt recruitment, and worry and the concern or the accusation

705
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:44,399
Speaker 2: almost that I'm not a real scientist. I'm not part

706
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:48,320
Speaker 2: of the scientific club, and I need to be listening

707
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 2: to the real scientists. And he had He was in

708
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 2: a room that had a lot of you know, Ivy

709
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 2: League neurologists and psychiatrists in the room, and he clearly

710
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:02,600
Speaker 2: didn't know that my background, my academic publication record probably

711
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 2: surpassed that of everybody in the room that he was

712
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 2: referring to. So it feels like, and I think it

713
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 2: is similar to the COVID we have our narrative. Shut up,

714
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 2: stay in your lane. We're not going to entertain your

715
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 2: ideas because we don't have to. We already know the answers,

716
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 2: so we're not listening. What's beautiful And you know, I'm

717
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 2: I've kind of done my piece now, and you help

718
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:33,520
Speaker 2: me with this book, which is a book for not

719
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:38,239
Speaker 2: for the medical community, but for operators, for the responders,

720
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:40,920
Speaker 2: for the combatants, for those in the combat arms. It's

721
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 2: a practical book, it's a guide. It's a short book.

722
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 2: Guys and gals can read, spouses can read to say, okay,

723
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,439
Speaker 2: this helps understand me, understand what's going on, and here's

724
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 2: all the solutions, most of which are not being provided

725
00:47:54,960 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 2: by VADOD or organized medicine. We have soul many good

726
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 2: treatments now that we're not really providing to people. And

727
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:07,080
Speaker 2: so now I think what I see happening, I think

728
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:10,880
Speaker 2: you share this view probably is it's no longer about

729
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:17,919
Speaker 2: what the military leadership, VA leadership, the people who are

730
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 2: at the top of the medical field or psychiatry or

731
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:24,840
Speaker 2: psychology fields are thinking. It's about what's coming from the

732
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 2: ground up. It's about it's about that that dea agent

733
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 2: who's hurting and going coming forward and say I need

734
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 2: enough of this. I don't need therapy for PTSD, I

735
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 2: need to have my hormones treated. It's the EODS, it's

736
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 2: the retired Seals. The Seal Future Foundation has created an

737
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:51,240
Speaker 2: entire program run by Seals for Seals using the Operator

738
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 2: Frame Syndrome framework and providing treatments that are consistent with,

739
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 2: you know, with what's needed to address these injuries. And

740
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 2: so there's other foundations out there, the Marine Recon Foundation,

741
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 2: the All Secure Foundation, There's just there's so many of them.

742
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:12,919
Speaker 2: Now there's many really good ones. Oh yeah, wait, isn't

743
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 2: there another foundation that may be young, new on the scene.

744
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:20,880
Speaker 2: There is the Operator Syndrome Foundation.

745
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:30,720
Speaker 1: You know, I can there's so many different angles to approach,

746
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:36,720
Speaker 1: you know. One my first comment is to the guys

747
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 1: who have the stars on their shoulders, to the bureaucrats

748
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: at the VA, we are not trying in any way,

749
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 1: shape or form to alter, reduce, or change the necessary

750
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:57,879
Speaker 1: training profiles in order to get the individual from the

751
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: time they roger up and raise their hand, and because

752
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:03,799
Speaker 1: they want to serve this nation, because of the heritage

753
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:06,799
Speaker 1: of those that have come before, because of those who

754
00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:13,480
Speaker 1: have died, for the patriotism that founds this which is

755
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 1: the cornerstone of America. You know, you know, they have

756
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:21,520
Speaker 1: to go through what they have to go through. We

757
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: do not want to change it. I have not talked

758
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: to a single operator that suffers from operator syndrome from

759
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: OS that wants to change anything they had to do.

760
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 1: Maybe put some gaps in between you know, the the

761
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: breaching charges they do per week, or you know, the

762
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 1: shoulder fire rockets or whatever it might be. Maybe they

763
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:51,399
Speaker 1: you know, they actually can take some medications that stabilize

764
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 1: the metabolic imbalance. Maybe they can address their orthopedic injuries

765
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: with better physical therapy in the midst or go do

766
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: high barracks after a deployments. That's what we want, right

767
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: We don't want to stop operator from young men becoming

768
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: on young men and women coming operator at all. What

769
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:14,680
Speaker 1: we want to do, though, is we want to make

770
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: sure that the next time we ask these people to

771
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 1: go down range and to possibly you know, sacrifice their lives,

772
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: but definitively to sacrifice their health and mental health in

773
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: the future, that there's a program prior to a predicate

774
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:38,880
Speaker 1: something for transition and then, as you had suggested, the

775
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: various programs that are out there to help them. To

776
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 1: give an estimation to the audience of the numbers and

777
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:52,880
Speaker 1: what's taking place, can you describe how many phone calls

778
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:58,840
Speaker 1: the Seal Future Fund receives annually once they discover the

779
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:02,239
Speaker 1: potential the frame work which with which they can be

780
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: helped through their system.

781
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 2: I can't give you an exact number, but I think

782
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 2: within the in the last three years they have served

783
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 2: twenty percent of the entire Navy seal community, every among

784
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 2: every seal not the active. They don't work too much

785
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 2: with the active, but all the retired seals, all the

786
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,959
Speaker 2: all the separated seals were now veterans. I think they've

787
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 2: served twenty to twenty five percent of them in the

788
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 2: last three years.

789
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 1: That's that's massive.

790
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 2: That's just not up every year. So the next two

791
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 2: years they'll they'll probably serve another twenty twenty five percent.

792
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,360
Speaker 1: When when we you and I have had these discussions

793
00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:44,319
Speaker 1: about all right, how many so at any one given time,

794
00:52:44,400 --> 00:52:49,280
Speaker 1: I think in SOCOM there's roughly seventy seventy five thousand

795
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 1: people or some some number. It's around it's it's that high, right,

796
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:55,439
Speaker 1: and I think it actually flexed and was bigger during

797
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 1: the gap, might be bigger now. But but you know,

798
00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 1: within that you have have a dedicated group of door

799
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:06,680
Speaker 1: kickers what they're called, right, people that are going downrange

800
00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:12,399
Speaker 1: doing the work out of that last the GWATT. Can

801
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 1: you give an estimation in your mind of how many

802
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:24,919
Speaker 1: guys are are afflicted right with I mean, I think

803
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: everybody's got some semblance of operators syndrome in something, right,

804
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: But what is your rough estimate of how many veteran

805
00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:42,479
Speaker 1: operators are struggling, really struggling with these this collective group

806
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: of challenges. Once again, I apologize for the interruption, but

807
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: I just wanted to remind you that this Saturday, on

808
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 1: May thirty first, at eleven am Eastern Standard Time on Patreon,

809
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: I will be giving a live motivational event. I'm going

810
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 1: to be discussing the thirty years that I have really

811
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:08,880
Speaker 1: been trying to understand the human condition through all of

812
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: my incredible experiences as a Seal, a CIA contractor in

813
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 1: a World Championship performance coach. Please join us by visiting

814
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 1: our Patreon account at David Rutherford Show. It's a two

815
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: dollars monthly subscription fee. I'll be given a one hour

816
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: presentation about the core Frog logic concepts, and then I'll

817
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 1: be doing a one hour Q and A. So if

818
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: you want to enjoy this, please join us at our

819
00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:37,720
Speaker 1: Patreon account at the David Ruthers Show this Saturday, eleven

820
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: am Eastern Standard time. Thank you.

821
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:48,400
Speaker 2: Back to the show man. There there is no epidemiological

822
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,279
Speaker 2: studies right that have been published or that I even

823
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:56,840
Speaker 2: know of, so it's really impossible to answer that question.

824
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:03,240
Speaker 2: I would say, however, I would say an operator syndrome,

825
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:06,880
Speaker 2: like every medical condition, can be occur on a continuum,

826
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 2: not everybody had the same experiences or the same training exposures.

827
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 2: Not everybody has the exact same manifestation of symptoms and effects.

828
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,240
Speaker 2: But if you if you go, well, we have seventy

829
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 2: thousand working at SOCOM right now, plus you know a

830
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 2: third of them of the d D is combat arms,

831
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 2: and so that's a you know what is that another

832
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 2: I don't know, half million men and women. Then you

833
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 2: add up all the firefighters and all of the law

834
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:47,160
Speaker 2: enforcement officers. I think it becomes you know, we're talking

835
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:49,239
Speaker 2: you know, we're not talking about a small number of people.

836
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:53,120
Speaker 2: We're talking about a couple of million, three four million

837
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:56,359
Speaker 2: people even maybe if we when we add veterans in there,

838
00:55:56,800 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 2: and then it's on a spectrum. And part of that

839
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:01,760
Speaker 2: spectrum is the nature and the intensity of the training

840
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 2: and the deployments, as well as the number of years.

841
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:11,880
Speaker 2: So I met last week, I my host Jason twenty

842
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:14,800
Speaker 2: seven years in the Air Force. As an EOD twenty

843
00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:18,919
Speaker 2: seven years, he's going to have things that somebody who's

844
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 2: only five years in isn't going to have yet. So

845
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 2: I think an important piece about the Operator Syndrome framework,

846
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 2: and that's what it is. It is a framework just

847
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:32,800
Speaker 2: to understand. It can be used from the beginning of

848
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 2: a career as a way as a perspective to help

849
00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 2: pay attention to monitor developing injuries and impairments as well

850
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:47,800
Speaker 2: as to mitigate them, and then downstream it can be

851
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:53,239
Speaker 2: a framework for treating more acute, severe injuries. So if

852
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,920
Speaker 2: I'm talking to a twenty year old soldier in the

853
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,920
Speaker 2: combat arms or who's is going, you know, planning a

854
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:07,200
Speaker 2: career in special operations, get a baseline on your hormones.

855
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,439
Speaker 2: Do it now, know what your hormone baseline is. Track

856
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 2: it every few years, Pay attention to where it is.

857
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 2: After certain you know, guys come back from a six

858
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:20,520
Speaker 2: month deployment or a year deployment, or or a three

859
00:57:20,560 --> 00:57:23,520
Speaker 2: even a three month deployment, we're seeing the entire platoon

860
00:57:23,640 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 2: or the entire units testosterone has gone way down. Now,

861
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:34,240
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean they need replacement therapy, time, rest, you know,

862
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 2: making some changes and bring it back. It will come

863
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:41,200
Speaker 2: back up naturally. If they're young. The older they get,

864
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 2: the harder that that becomes, and the more evolutions of

865
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:47,360
Speaker 2: that of those trainings and deployments, the harder it becomes

866
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,920
Speaker 2: for it to restore itself naturally. But that would That's

867
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 2: just one example. And if I were, you know, somebody

868
00:57:53,760 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 2: asked me recently, what are the like, what are the

869
00:57:56,440 --> 00:58:00,320
Speaker 2: three four things that I would recommend to every buddy?

870
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:04,120
Speaker 2: So this is just by way of practical solutions. Can

871
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 2: I can I give you that those place things now?

872
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 2: So first of all, the two things that are just easy,

873
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:14,880
Speaker 2: they're just assessments. Get a sleep study if you snore

874
00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 2: or you have sleep problems or fatigue problems. Get a

875
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:22,560
Speaker 2: hormone check, check your hormones. Men and women should be

876
00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 2: tracking to get their hormones checked. A third is an

877
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 2: intervention that is not well known about but is powerful

878
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 2: clinical benefits, and that's stelic Ganglian block. That's a very simple,

879
00:58:37,240 --> 00:58:41,920
Speaker 2: five minute outpatient procedure. It involves injecting medicine into the

880
00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 2: sympathetic nervous system. What it does is it just brings

881
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:49,040
Speaker 2: down that fight or flight physiological arousal. Just brings it

882
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 2: down from a baseline of you know, eight nine down

883
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:54,720
Speaker 2: to two or three. And it will last four months,

884
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:59,760
Speaker 2: two months, six months, eighteen months even And that opens

885
00:58:59,800 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 2: the or because guys feel immediately more relaxed. Gals two,

886
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 2: they are able to concentrate better because they don't have

887
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:13,439
Speaker 2: all that noise in their physiological system. They sleep better,

888
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,720
Speaker 2: which just brings a whole cascade of amazing benefits. Sleep

889
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 2: is so important, they're nicer, their families like them. Again,

890
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 2: I've heard spouses refer to it as the as the

891
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 2: anti asshole treatment, and it can save lives and marriages

892
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:34,440
Speaker 2: and families. And then the fourth thing I would put

893
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 2: on the list is dial in your own habits, your

894
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 2: own lifestyle habits, prioritize sleep, learn what good sleep habits mean.

895
00:59:44,480 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 2: There's programs that can help teach you that and develop

896
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:53,080
Speaker 2: those habits, and then develop an anti inflammatory lifestyle, meaning

897
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 2: reduce alcohol and tobacco or eliminate altogether. Eat whole food diet,

898
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 2: don't eat processed foods, jung foods, fast foods. Hot saunas.

899
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:10,480
Speaker 2: Hot saunas is a very powerful anti inflammatory for the body.

900
01:00:10,600 --> 01:00:13,680
Speaker 2: Anything that reduces inflammation is going to be good for

901
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 2: every part of the system. It will help reduce pain,

902
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 2: it'll help with the neuroinflammation in the brain associated with TBI,

903
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 2: so it's a brain healer. If you do those four things,

904
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 2: you know and do them from the beginning of a career,

905
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 2: all the way to the end of life. You know,

906
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 2: track track, your sleep track, your hormones were a sleep

907
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:39,920
Speaker 2: monitor something, some kind of fitness tracker to figure out

908
01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 2: to pay an engineer sleep massive gains. And then from there, Yeah,

909
01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:49,640
Speaker 2: there's therapy. There's maybe psychiatric medications if you need it,

910
01:00:50,600 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 2: but hyperbaric oxygen therapies, the stibular therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy,

911
01:00:57,440 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 2: psychedelic plant medicine, not microdosing, that's not what I'm talking about,

912
01:01:03,240 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 2: but a true medically supervised journey, powerful, powerful interventions that

913
01:01:08,560 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 2: we have. So we're not giving these treatments to people

914
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:16,720
Speaker 2: very very often, we're not allowing people even to know

915
01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:21,280
Speaker 2: about them. Your average psychologists or psychiatrists has never referred

916
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:25,520
Speaker 2: a patient to get a hormone check, has never referred

917
01:01:25,520 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 2: a patient to get a stelle a ganglion block if

918
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:30,800
Speaker 2: they may not even know most probably don't even know

919
01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 2: what stelle a ganglion is.

920
01:01:32,600 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: Well, that's all That's what I found. I mean, I

921
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: started working with veterans charities in two thousand and twelve

922
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:42,680
Speaker 1: or thirteen, and you know, it's like, all right, how

923
01:01:42,720 --> 01:01:45,280
Speaker 1: do I give back? How do I how do I

924
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:48,400
Speaker 1: you know, support veterans friends of mine, you know, because

925
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: I realized we started feeling the suicides around two thousand

926
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:56,440
Speaker 1: and eight nine, they started picking up, and you know,

927
01:01:56,760 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 1: by by fifteen or sixteen, we're just exploding. And so

928
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, I want to contribute. But

929
01:02:02,040 --> 01:02:04,120
Speaker 1: what I ended up finding is that a lot of

930
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,680
Speaker 1: the charities that I was affiliated with, we're not going

931
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 1: after these targeted and specific treatment modalities, right, these very

932
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: specific things that we're going to address the full spectrum.

933
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:20,760
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, that's why organizations like you know,

934
01:02:20,800 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: the ones you had mentioned in particular, what what are

935
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:27,160
Speaker 1: what we started in terms of Operator Center Foundation one,

936
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 1: as you know we started you and I, we wanted

937
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: it to be education, so offering a free education course

938
01:02:34,640 --> 01:02:37,560
Speaker 1: for anybody who wants to learn about this in detail,

939
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:40,640
Speaker 1: and some ideas and suggestions and all that. But then

940
01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:43,720
Speaker 1: obviously at more Blake we just kind of I mean,

941
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 1: I know, I got sick of the organization, you know,

942
01:02:47,080 --> 01:02:50,720
Speaker 1: having all of this be so separated, to try and

943
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: figure out how to quarterback this for the individual. And

944
01:02:54,360 --> 01:02:56,840
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's why, really, why you know,

945
01:02:57,440 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: what spawned you know, John and I with your health

946
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 1: to initiate, you know, this pilot program for these five

947
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:08,360
Speaker 1: different guys from five different units, but really all suffering

948
01:03:08,440 --> 01:03:10,479
Speaker 1: from the same thing and in different stages of their.

949
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:11,680
Speaker 2: Careers, you know.

950
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 1: But it's it's focusing on metabolic stabilization, right, it's focusing

951
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:23,000
Speaker 1: on neurogenic you know support, behavioral health support, and then

952
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 1: orthopedic you know, managing pain, and and it's it's nice

953
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: that that we have identified, but the real problem that

954
01:03:32,960 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 1: I still see is that it's still so fractionalized. It's

955
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:40,640
Speaker 1: still so different. You have to go to like you said,

956
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:44,200
Speaker 1: you walk into your primary healthcare doctor and he looks

957
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:46,400
Speaker 1: at you and he's like and you ask him, do

958
01:03:46,480 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 1: you understand blast wave exposure? And he looks at you,

959
01:03:49,760 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 1: like what are you talking about? Are then you go

960
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: into someone else and it's like, oh, I've I've got

961
01:03:55,920 --> 01:03:58,520
Speaker 1: this from all of this, and they're like, well, wait,

962
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:00,760
Speaker 1: what do you mean all on our stand all of this,

963
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:03,880
Speaker 1: and and then like and then I'll never forget, you know,

964
01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:08,400
Speaker 1: I I went, uh, you know. We're working with Kevin Lace,

965
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: who's a PA in Pennsacole, Florida, and tried at medicine

966
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: with our metabox stabilization aspect. And I remember my first

967
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:20,840
Speaker 1: panel I went in was thirty six vials of blood right,

968
01:04:21,320 --> 01:04:24,640
Speaker 1: And I remember the technician being like, I've never seen

969
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:27,240
Speaker 1: anybody get this many. What's wrong with you? And I

970
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:29,680
Speaker 1: was like, you ever heard operator syndrome?

971
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 2: And they're you know? And they're like, no, you know.

972
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 1: And and so I think the challenge is now, how

973
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:40,760
Speaker 1: do we how do we teach people out there to

974
01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 1: help quarterback? So people that are suffering.

975
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:48,360
Speaker 2: So the excellent question an excellent point. Yeah, so just

976
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:52,280
Speaker 2: to kind of recap, medicine is ignorant and arrogant. We

977
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:54,920
Speaker 2: already have all the answers. We don't deviate from what

978
01:04:55,000 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 2: the algorithm of our field tells us to do. We're

979
01:04:59,480 --> 01:05:04,320
Speaker 2: a fraction. We're fragmented. You know, your psychiatrist never talks

980
01:05:04,360 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 2: to your sleep doctor, never talks to your primary care doctor,

981
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 2: never talks to your oncologist or whatever. Maybe they look

982
01:05:11,360 --> 01:05:14,040
Speaker 2: at the medical record and go, oh, yeah, this diagnosis

983
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:16,240
Speaker 2: is there and these medications are there, but there's never

984
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 2: really any deep thought about all of that. So there's

985
01:05:18,520 --> 01:05:25,040
Speaker 2: no recognition that all of these physiological systems are interconnected.

986
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 2: So education is critical. We the operator Syndrome Foundation has

987
01:05:31,320 --> 01:05:35,040
Speaker 2: an online training program or online curriculum, so that's free.

988
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:41,480
Speaker 2: That's available. The Seal Future Foundation has a website titled

989
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:44,040
Speaker 2: the Operator Health Index. You can go to the Seal

990
01:05:44,080 --> 01:05:48,680
Speaker 2: Future Foundation's website. It's free. Anybody can access that. The

991
01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:51,680
Speaker 2: Operator Syndrome Medical Paper is on the internet. If you

992
01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 2: just put into your search engine and operator syndrome medical Paper,

993
01:05:55,640 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 2: it'll come up. What I often tell people is printed

994
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:03,280
Speaker 2: off on paper, go through with a highlighter circle the

995
01:06:03,360 --> 01:06:06,080
Speaker 2: things that are relevant to you. Take that to your doctors,

996
01:06:06,360 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 2: take that to your prime to your providers, your primary

997
01:06:09,120 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 2: care docs, whoever educate them. Oftentimes people say, well, my

998
01:06:13,840 --> 01:06:17,640
Speaker 2: doc won't give me a hormone blood panel. When they

999
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:20,720
Speaker 2: take that paper in with that circled, it usually changes

1000
01:06:20,800 --> 01:06:22,920
Speaker 2: the story. So that's one effective way to kind of,

1001
01:06:24,040 --> 01:06:28,280
Speaker 2: I won't say manipulate, but educate your providers. And then

1002
01:06:28,480 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 2: we also have this book that is literally a thin, easy, quick,

1003
01:06:32,760 --> 01:06:37,560
Speaker 2: practical read, practical guide to learn to understand as well

1004
01:06:37,640 --> 01:06:40,240
Speaker 2: as to understand not just the injuries and the impairments,

1005
01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 2: but the solutions, the treatments, the lifestyle habits that can

1006
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:47,520
Speaker 2: be developed. So there's a lot of ways to learn

1007
01:06:47,560 --> 01:06:51,200
Speaker 2: about this. You're right learning about it, and I would

1008
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:54,760
Speaker 2: say spreading the word because you're listening to this and

1009
01:06:54,840 --> 01:06:58,000
Speaker 2: you've learned about it, and I don't. This isn't meant

1010
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:01,200
Speaker 2: to be all about self promotion. But share with your

1011
01:07:01,240 --> 01:07:05,040
Speaker 2: buddies because they probably haven't heard for sure.

1012
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:11,960
Speaker 1: Well, Chris, you know, just uh, I can't thank you

1013
01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:15,200
Speaker 1: enough from not only from from the bottom of my

1014
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:18,840
Speaker 1: heart and the immediate friends of mine that you've you've

1015
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:22,800
Speaker 1: saved their lives, but to all the other work that

1016
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:26,840
Speaker 1: you're doing, and the and the tireless you know, banging

1017
01:07:26,920 --> 01:07:31,120
Speaker 1: on doors and giving zoom calls and and the more

1018
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 1: importantly those middle of the night calls of guys in crisis.

1019
01:07:34,680 --> 01:07:38,760
Speaker 1: I just can't thank you enough. And hopefully when people

1020
01:07:38,880 --> 01:07:41,840
Speaker 1: listen to this, you know, you'll recognize that, you know,

1021
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:46,200
Speaker 1: the toll of warfare is is is much much much

1022
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:49,960
Speaker 1: deeper than just you know, the the war story or

1023
01:07:50,240 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 1: the sacrifice on the battlefield. It reverberates UH for generations

1024
01:07:55,160 --> 01:08:01,520
Speaker 1: across families, across UH units, across UH doctors who treat

1025
01:08:01,640 --> 01:08:04,800
Speaker 1: and people and physicians and nurses and all of those

1026
01:08:04,960 --> 01:08:07,520
Speaker 1: people at impacts as it comes across you know the

1027
01:08:07,600 --> 01:08:11,439
Speaker 1: impact of that, that higher level sacrificial service. So thank

1028
01:08:11,520 --> 01:08:16,040
Speaker 1: you for everything you've done, and you know, just wish

1029
01:08:16,120 --> 01:08:16,679
Speaker 1: you all the best.

1030
01:08:16,760 --> 01:08:16,920
Speaker 2: Man.

1031
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:19,080
Speaker 1: Where where can people go to buy the book and

1032
01:08:19,360 --> 01:08:21,120
Speaker 1: how can they pay attention to what you're doing in

1033
01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:21,599
Speaker 1: your life.

1034
01:08:22,720 --> 01:08:25,599
Speaker 2: Well, the book's easy to find. It's on Amazon, operator

1035
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:28,959
Speaker 2: syndrome it is. You can get it directly from the publisher,

1036
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 2: Ballast Books. They published. They've got a whole suite of

1037
01:08:32,479 --> 01:08:35,720
Speaker 2: really terrific books written by by military. It's kind of

1038
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:37,880
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it's all military, but it's got a

1039
01:08:37,960 --> 01:08:42,599
Speaker 2: strong patriotic focus. I do have a website Chris free

1040
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:45,720
Speaker 2: dot com. See if you know how to spell my name,

1041
01:08:47,320 --> 01:08:49,640
Speaker 2: and I'm not on social media. I did that for

1042
01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:52,679
Speaker 2: a year to support the book and hate every minute

1043
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:55,360
Speaker 2: of it. So I disappeared from social media a few

1044
01:08:55,400 --> 01:08:59,839
Speaker 2: months ago. Awesome, Yeah, thank you brother, This was great conversation.

1045
01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:02,000
Speaker 1: God bless you. Thank your brother.