Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com.
And today I've got two special guests, Dr. Eugene Lipov and
Jamie Mustard. They are the authors of The
Invisible Machine. And today we're diving deep into
their new innovative approach to preventing chronic stress, PTSD,
which we're going to try and rechange the name to PTSI and
the strategy they do to accomplish that.
We talked about the sympathetic nervous system and how that is
often times being chronically elevated and stressed in a
growing percentage of the population and what some driving
factors behind that may be. And we just really peel the
curtain back on their new and innovative approach to curing
that both in the short term and long term if the other
modalities are put into place. So very interesting
conversation. I really like talking with
people that are thinking outside the box, on the tip of the spear
of something innovative, which these two gentlemen are most
certainly doing. So if you find yourself
chronically stressed, if you find yourself, if you know
someone that is struggling with some form of stress disorder,
PTSD like symptoms and finds that to be debilitating, this
may be a very worthwhile conversation for y'all to listen
to. So without further delay, sit
back, relax, enjoy the conversation with Doctor Lipov
and Jamie Mustard and we are live.
How you gentlemen doing today? I'm doing great.
Great. Thanks for having us.
Absolutely. So just for the listeners say we
got two guests today, We got Jamie Mustard and Doctor Eugene
Leipov, if I'm saying that correctly.
And we're going to be diving into the sympathetic nervous
system first and foremost, correct.
Yes Sir. All right, y'all are on the the
tip of the spear doing some groundbreaking research as to
how to improve patients and and clientele that are suffering
from extreme PTSD in the sense, but basically just an
overreaction of the sympathetic nervous state.
So can you kind of give us just peel the curtain back a little
bit and talk about what the the catalyst for this research was,
if you don't mind? Doctor, I mean, well, I'm just,
I'm a I'm an artist. And a writer, and I've worked on
communicating, helping to communicate this in, and I have
ideas about what this thing means to the world.
But you're sitting here with the inventor of this groundbreaking
procedure, so he should probably answer that question.
It's a good bet I spent 17 years on it.
I wrote a bunch of articles on it anyway, so I'm an
anesthesiologist and just as a kind of background, so I've been
doing some pathetic blocks. So fight and flight nerve.
Blocks since 1987 through an interesting set of circumstance.
I became interested in PTSD because it was a predecessor to
my approach was a surgical procedure where they move the
lung out of the way and they clip nerves in the chest for
hand sweats and they found out the hand sweats went away but
PTSD stopped was making sweats disorder, which we will talk
about later. But the key point it turns out
when somebody has enough stress, so walking down the street,
somebody almost hits you by a car, your fight or flight system
gets overactive or sympathetic system, and when you forget
about the whole thing, sympathetic system goes goes
back to normal. So there's no problem.
But if there's multiple incidents like that, or there's
a couple of big ones, be it sexual attack, be it military.
B. Just being ignored by the
parents can make the sympathetic systems, fight and flight system
get stuck in an on position. If it's an on position you can
make your life miserable. So if you can look at the most
obvious perspective of it. If you think about what happens
to your body when you're running from the tiger, parametai tiger,
you're looking around making sure the tiger doesn't need you.
So it's hyper vigilance. You have to sleep is one eye
open so that tiger doesn't get you.
You're not digesting in food because you need to be.
All the energy you got goes to the legs.
You can run. You're not going to be having
interest in sexual function. Anything sticks out is going to
get in your way and so on. So that's kind of the
sympathetic system. One O 1.
So it turns out there's a procedure has been done since
1926 called Stellar Ganglion Block, which is numbing up the
fight and flight nerve system. And it seems to reset this over
activation or sympathetic system that's stuck in on position and
the responses can be amazing quickly 1015 minutes and can
last a month or years. So that's kind of very broad
overview. Well, I would like to tag on to
that and give my take on what he just said.
OK, I think I would say the Doctor is being exceedingly
humble in his description of what he has discovered.
And how it works and who it affects.
The the what he's talking about is in his research he basically
found the location of what we now know is the sympathetic
nervous system. And in a in a simple safe
outpatient procedure over one to two days he can reset the
nervous system to the pre trauma state.
That's if you have to look at the nervous system like a broken
leg. Right.
It is the primary thing. When you see a traumatized
person, whether it's because they've carried stress their
whole life or they've had this big traumatic incident, the
primary thing that is going on with them, they might have, you
know, brain health issues. They might have other physical
issues. They might need talk therapy.
They could have a lot of things going on with them.
But likely the most primary thing going on with most human
beings they're struggling internally is their nervous
system is shock. OK, it's it's as, as Doctor
Lipov said, it's stuck on, right?
And we know this is the primary thing because we can see it in
an animal, right? If you take a dog, a chick and a
cat, a goat, and you beat the crap out of it, it changes and
it changes. It either gets really, really
meek or it gets really, really aggressive.
We didn't just give that animal a disorder, we changed its
biology. This.
This is what Doctor Lipov discovered, and this is what he
can reverse. So when you reverse this and I,
Doctor Lipak can talk more about this.
But when you reverse this, when you take the sympathetic nervous
system and you put it back to the pre trauma state, all of
these other incredible therapeutics in the world from
talk therapy to yoga to nature to working out to all the things
we do to kind of reset our nervous system are become way
more effective and way more joyous because you're doing, you
know, otherwise you're doing these therapies over a broken
leg. And so there's so there's
hundreds of millions of people across the world, maybe in the
United States, that have this physical injury in their body
that don't associate with war trauma or sexual assault trauma.
They just maybe their dad didn't hug them that could give this to
you not getting your emotional needs met, a business failure.
And there's wives and husbands all over the world.
They're looking at their loved one who they don't associate
with, trauma that has the same symptoms as someone coming back
from Afghanistan. Because of they have this
biological injury to their body and we should get at some point
in the interviews, we should get into that.
But that's what he's come across and I think it is the most
important medical innovation since the discovery of
penicillin in 1928 and maybe the most important human innovation
since the moon landing when this comes out in the end.
And that's why we wrote the book.
I'm definitely keen to dive into this.
So from a physical standpoint, what is actually causing the
body to get stuck in a sympathetic set?
Because it's like a tangible thing going on neurologically in
the brain, like what's physically happening.
Yeah, so if you don't mind, let me answer it two ways.
I usually like to give a direct answer, but I'm gonna be elusive
today, OK? So I'm trying to change the name
PTSD to PTSI Postering Stress Injury and you'll see how it all
works together. So so basically.
There was a gentleman, his name is Frank Ogbert.
He came up with the term Stockholm syndrome, very famous
psychiatrist, and he believed the name needs to be changed.
PTSD disorder, which is nonspecific to post traumatic
stress injury, meaning there is some kind of brain change and we
can talk about it later. We're doing campaign, we're
working with American psychiatricization trying to
change the name because I did a study that showed that if the
name is changed, then the stigma goes away and stigma goes away.
People seek care and they survive.
Which is pretty big deal I think.
Anyway, so back to the Physiology.
So when event happens or multiple events, two things
happen. First thing happens immediately
is called secretion or release of norepinephrine.
Probably most people have heard of adrenaline.
Norepinephrine is it's brother and it's the neurotransmitter in
the brain. So when you feel hyped up
because you almost got hit by a bus, that's not a preference.
So if you take fluid. Around the brain of somebody
who's PTSD, you will see an increasing level of
norepinephrine. The other thing that happens is
is substance called NGF, Neuro growth factor or science.
People like me will like to talk about neurotropics.
Neurotropic means something that will make the nerves grow, fight
in flight nerves or sympathetic nerve sympathy particularly
responsive to NGF nerve. In your growth strep and your
growth factor, what happens is it gets released in the brain
and then it gets brought down to the neck where sympathetic
ganglia reside. Once it hits the ganglia, it
promotes nerve growth in the brain.
So if you think of, let's say before trauma, somebody has four
sympathetic nerves in the brain, now they have eight.
Each one of those produces norepinephrine.
So as long as that state persists.
People will have symptoms of PTSD or PTS side.
The hardest part for me was starting to figure out why local
nesthetic that lasts 8 hours can give you 1015 years of relief.
Turns out when you put local nesthetic onto the ganglia it
deactivates NGF nerve growth factor and it does two things.
The first thing it does, it stops secretion of
norepinephrine immediately. So in about 5-10 minutes people
go, I can now take a breath first time in 20 years.
But #2 it reduces NGF amount. As that drops, it leads to
something called pruning or the nerve fibers that grew before
those four and then became 8 and goes back to four.
So when we talk about reset, I think in a very real way it is
resetting the biological system. And the last piece is, this
sounds like an interesting theory, but yeah, maybe yes,
maybe no. So there was a study done by a
body of mine, Doctor Alkire in Long Beach CA 2015 and they
found that if you do a PET scan which evaluates brain function,
you could see a reduction of the brain scan function of Amygdal
which controls PKSDPKSI after stellate in a day or two.
So I don't know that that's pretty clear, hopefully.
Robert Can I, Robert, can I get my comment on what he just said?
But like a plumber? Yeah, yeah, totally.
OK, you know my interpretation of what he just said and he can
correct me if he doesn't like it.
But you know, my interpretation is basically, you know, you have
this overwhelming incident where you carry chronic allostatic
load, which is how I think most people get this injury.
I think most of the people that have this don't associate with
trauma because they just, they haven't been to war.
Or they haven't had a sexual assault or been a first
responder. But, you know, you have this
either overwhelming thing. You have to think about it like
if you were being attacked by a tiger in the jungle, you know
you you're designed to live in a tiger attack for about 30 to 90
seconds. You're either going to kill that
tiger or you're going to flee the tiger, or you're going to
die. You know that you're that's how
long the body is designed to live in fight or flight in an
overwhelming. A cycle, you know, traumatic
event like a tiger attack or your buddy's head getting blown
off or seeing someone die or a sexual assault.
Your you have the this biological you know these things
get secreted in the brain. Like Doctor Lipop said the NGF
and the and the norepinephrine. The NGF grows the nerves.
Your sympathetic nervous system is housed in your neck and the
select ganglion on each side of your neck.
And that's that feeling that pushes your body into immediate
action to save your life. Where you swerve your car, you
stop yourself from slipping. That comes from your neck.
OK, well, those things are too big.
Then. Like he said, you've created a
biological change where these secretions are now causing that
to get stuck up because of the extra nerves that grow from the
nerve growth factor. This is a layman's term, but
this is kind of a simplified way of saying it.
The the signal it gets, it gets stuck in that heightened state.
And then the signal basically reverses, telling your brain,
these nerves in your neck are telling your brain 33165 days a
year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, that your life is
in danger. That's very useful if you're a
tiger infested jungle, if you're sitting on your couch eating
popcorn or Cheetos watching Netflix.
It's a horror show. So the state that we're designed
to live in for 30 to 90 seconds. For 10s and 10s of millions of
Americans they live in it 24 hours a day 365 and that had and
because we're not designed to live that way and Doctor Lipov
can talk more about this. It runs havoc biologically on
your body. It contributes to autoimmune
diseases cancers it it it it makes your body a a mess and a
Petri disk for more problems. So, but again, what causes?
The other thing that causes this is if you have.
If you carry, you know, you know, a stress every day, that's
a very deep stress. It's like they have this thing
called operator syndrome where when a soldier is in Afghanistan
to for 30, you know, three years and maybe they're never in a
firefight, but they're thinking about their family.
They hear about their friends are dying.
They have to worry about IUDEDS wherever they go.
But they're carrying this deep stress.
They get this injury and it has the following symptoms.
They call it operator syndrome. Anxiety here trigger reactivity,
hyper vigilance, hyper arousal paranoia, sense of doom.
And in the military, where people are trained to protect,
the ultimate form of flight is suicide.
In neighborhoods where I grew up, where violence is OK, the
opposite the the ultimate form of fight is homicide and it
explains so many things that are going on in our society and
fabric of our society that have been unexplained.
So what I'm trying to say. My interpretation of what Doctor
Lip off has created and what he what he said is that you know I
think maybe 30 to 50% of the populate the US population.
You know 150 million people, 100 million people are walking
around with operator syndrome with the exact same symptoms and
they don't know why because they don't associate with trauma.
Well, I'm assuming the the increased nerve growth factor
and the increased release of norepinephrine is going to have
a pretty significant down regulation of any hormones
associated with the parasympathetic.
Yeah, Let me tell you about that.
Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right,
Sir. So I actually wrote a couple of
interesting papers that would be an interesting thing.
So China, in China, they actually do a lot of work on
Stelly for TBI, traumatic brain injury and other things.
So there was a. Complication about ulcerative
colitis, right. Autoimmune disease, no question,
no debate. So that's associated with really
nasty symptoms. And Interleukin 6 which has
increased which is basically tells you how the immune system
is overactive. Interleukin 6 by the way, on a
side note is what goes nuts during COVID and when people
have from Interleukin crisis, that's like the big player of
it. So they took 60 people, 30 of
them had stellate and normal treatment for ulcerative colitis
and then the other ones just did the normal thing.
They found out people who had stellate had significant
improvement of ulcerative colitis and interleukin 6
reduced. So I wrote the paper explaining
why that happens. Turned out there is a direct
connection from stellate to two places in the body which are
hyper important, such as thymus which controls T cells and bone
marrow which is B cells. So the point is when somebody is
running continuous sympathetics, it's very consumptive of immune
system. Further, people who have PTSD
have twice the rate of heart attacks.
Theoretically, I do not have the evidence of that effect, but
theoretically, if the immune system is dysregulated, that's
what fight or flight does. The chance of cancer increases
because most people develop cancer, but they do not have
cancer because they have scavengers.
The immune system chews up bad cells.
So I think living in a stress is a horrible long term impact and
also reduces brain size. It has many other terrible
things to to really bring this home.
I think for the average listener, you know that they may
not have, as you pointed out you know gone to war, been suffering
from diagnosed PTSD. But I would think a lot of the
research around social media and just chronically being in a
heightened sense of awareness as a result of the stimulus that
that brings forward and especially in like younger
children and teens, female demographic, both male and
female though actually like just constantly looking at their
phone and playing this. Comparison game?
I would love to. I would love to comment on that
and then have Eugene talk about it, but could I comment on that?
Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I mean, listen, you know,
we're living in a state in the modern world that's very
unnatural. You know, I studied economics
and economic history and the history of economic systems in
college and you know, we you 300 years ago, we were still kind of
an agrarian society. That means we were in nature, We
were around animals. These things mitigate the
nervous system, OK? Human beings are not designed.
We know that the minute we get into nature, we feel present and
we feel calm and our nervous system relaxes.
It's part of resilience. Animals do the same thing,
right? There's a lot of simple things.
Running does it. Yoga does it.
You know, I don't want to get too woo, but meditation can do
it. There's a lot of things that and
then alcohol or drinking can do it.
But you know, we're living in this time where in this 50,000
years of human evolution and then in a 300 year light switch,
all of a sudden we're living in these artificial environments,
synthetic environments. We sit in synthetic, we live in
a synthetic box. We get into another roving
synthetic box to go to another synthetic box.
We work there for a few hours, several hours or all day.
Then we get back in our roving synthetic box to come back to a
synthetic box. Human beings are not designed to
not be having things around them that are regulating their
nervous system. OK.
So if you think about it from, you know, this example of 2000
years ago in the tiger infested jungle, yeah.
So this thing helps you survive if your nervous system gets
jacked because there's tigers all over this jungle, that's a
good thing because you're going to be on constant alert.
You're going to be hyper vigilant.
You're going to be reactive. This is going to keep you alive.
But you're also have nature around regulating the nervous
system. So now what's happened in, in
our kind of modern way of living is we have the problem without
the regulation, right. And then you add on to that
social media, right? You know, there's been studies
that show a direct corollary between the rise of social media
on cell phones and preteen suicide, suicidal ideation,
which is part of fight or flight in most in mostly in girls.
OK. The the pressure that young
girls feel and young and young people feel in this comparison
culture, we've we already felt that stuff 20 years ago, before
the Internet, when it's all in real time on Instagram.
Those pressures are massive and it creates A chronic stress on
the nervous system and there's nothing around to mitigate it.
And that's why I think the numbers are grossly
underestimated. And I I don't know if Doctor.
Yeah. I'm assuming someone that is
subjecting themselves to that level of chronic stress.
While that is extreme, that is not like, you know, the acute
stress of being almost hit by a bus or seeing your friend's head
blown off. Something of that I I would, I
would, I would well, again there's two things that 'cause
this the the acute stress but I think the more common cause is
what I would call operator syndrome which is what maybe 100
million Americans have, maybe 150 million which is carrying a
micro stress for too long. So say you're in the jungle and
you you survive a survive tiger attack but there's tigers
everywhere. So every time you step out of
your Hut or your cave or whatever you're like tigers, you
know it's on you, right? That's what that the body is
going to interpret that biologically the same way that
a, you know 12 year old is going to interpret bullying or trying
to live up to someone's social media.
The sympathetic nervous system doesn't think it's apathetic, it
only responds. So those two situations can be
equally stressful and lead to the same biological change with
the the the sprouting that Doctor Lipop talked about where
you're then in this permanent state of fight or flight
actually think that is the far more common syndrome.
And that's what's horrible is because you have all these
people out there that are looking, you know, they're
medicalizing themselves whether it's through psychotropics or
they're self medicating. And they well, you know, they
think they have a disorder which is incredibly stigmatizing.
But really, their nervous system is just jacked and we can see it
on a brain scan, you can see it on a fMRI and nobody's talking
about it. So is the rate at which those
nerve growth factors are growing and releasing more
norepinephrine. On par with that level of
chronic stress from social media and things of that nature as to
what it would, I think Doctor Lipard would be a better person.
Let me give you an answer to that.
So the basic answer is we don't know that that has not been
started. But what has been started is
social media. Let's just stick to social
media. So social media does a number of
things. First of all, I do not
participate much in social media.
Nor do I watch like flash news. It's like, but the thing to
remember is that it depends what shape the body is in.
You knowing a lot about nutrition, understand nutrition
has a lot to do how you you're feeling.
The other part, people don't quite realize that the impact of
sleep on PTSD or PTSI mental health.
There's many, many, many studies now showing that if you do not
sleep 7 hours or more than your. Function will be degraded 1-2 if
you look at. So it turns out when people
think we all produce poisons in our brain the only way to get it
out is deep phase of sleep. So if you never get full asleep
and it's a problem. So a lot of people who are
anxious, let's say you read something that's upsetting or
scary, or somebody insults you or scares you on Internet and
and whichever way that happens then you can't sleep.
You can't sleep. It affects your sleep, it
affects your function, but it also increases fight and flight.
Just not sleeping well increases the fight and flight function.
So a lot of people with sleep apnea or they don't sleep well,
have hypertension or high blood pressure.
It's all connected. Now the NGF is that doesn't have
to be a cue, doesn't have to be overtime.
I really don't know. But if you look at the number of
people who have. PTSD based on the screening
tools which is are the best we have currently you're looking at
at least quarter of first responders and people like that.
Probably 1/4 of women who are abused or near abused or scared
all of that. It also did did so a lot of I've
had a number of people go I I didn't shouldn't do the block.
I don't deserve it because I don't know PTSDI was never in
combat. I was never sexually molested.
But I had a really tough childhood.
People would beat me. You know, it's normal.
It's like it's not normal really if people beat you in childhood
and so on. So the point is it depends on
type of trauma, length of trauma.
It just depends how sensitive you are.
Like, I'm particularly sensitive.
Let me give you another thing to remember.
So there is a whole science critical epigenetics.
So genes. Most people think DNA is this
immobile thing that will only change if you have a mutation.
Turns out genes are very flexible.
They were designed by nature to react to the environment.
So just look at my case for example, my grandfather was
almost killed during programs in Ukraine.
He gave those genes and they go to three generations.
So my father get those genes and he goes to World War 2, has
horrible PDSD and he gives that to me.
So if somebody like me. I had those genes and I had a
very interesting childhood, to put it mildly.
Really. Living with somebody as PTSD is
entertaining. But like they compare, someone
who had a very smooth childhood didn't have those genetics and
we had the same trauma, the one who had great childhood, the
chance PTSD is much lower, mine is much higher.
So a lot of people say nature loves the gun, but circumstances
fires it. And can you, can you explain to
Robert and the audience the difference between PTSD and PTSI
and why you want to change the name based on what you just
said? Yeah.
So the whole thing is PTSD is Postman express disorder.
That's a term that was introduced in 1980 and that
continued that in 2012. So in 2012, General Shirelli,
who was in charge of suicide prevention.
Or U.S. Army basically went to the APA
and said hey, we need to change the term because my guys are
killing themselves, stigma is killing them and they were
ignored, shall we say. So in 2023, actually I did a
study that shows that yes, if you change the name PTSDPTSI, it
will go away, a lot of signal will go away.
So what I did with that is submitted that to the American
Psychiatric station because the idea is that.
PTSI is actually visible in the scan.
So we have a nice PSA that which is public service and I can
share with you Robert. Basically the easiest way to
think about it is like a broken leg.
Somebody has a broken leg and you show them the picture of the
leg. There's no stigma getting cast
or getting it fixed. So if you scan a brain, you can
see over activation amygdala and it's like, oh cares, I'll get
treated no problem. As opposed to, well, it's a
weakness to the soul. You're worse, you're this,
you're that. It doesn't really exist.
So that leads to a lot of stigma and not believing that it's even
possible to get better. So disorder, you kind of got it
the rest of your life. Like, you know most people in
schizophrenia, you got it the rest of your life, right?
Why is there so much pushback on changing that name?
Well, it's interesting I've tried to figure that out.
So there was an interesting write up.
From that was Washington Post. Would they ask Doctor Friedman,
who was making that ultimate decision in 2012, why do you not
want to change it? His answers were, say, politely
obscure. And then there's this whole
thing. My God, we're gonna over
diagnose people with PTSI. EDGE is horrible.
My God. So my answer to that response
has been address it. Over diagnosed and under
diagnosed. Look how many people are dying.
So you know everybody talks about 22, right?
22 people suicide per day in the military.
A friend of mine actually looked at it recently and he circulated
that internally in Pentagon. I think the numbers are almost
twice. That depends how you define
suicide. I I I have my I have my
assumptions as to why. Yeah, hold on JB.
I'm not. Let me give me a second one.
You got to. So the I do not.
I cannot defend PTSD. There is a lot of reasons why
people don't want to change. In medicine, people don't like
to change because there's always something attached to it.
They could be all type of special interest groups,
whatever. But honestly I I cannot defend D
because it's not defensible. That's why I'm.
Leading charge on that. And yeah, that's why you know
the song We Got Pins, We Got this, we got that.
I am hoping in 1212 months is going to be done.
Yeah, that I think, I mean I think the the benefit of
changing the name would outweigh the the negatives for sure.
I mean, the what? What were you about to say
there, Mustren? Yeah.
You know, to me, there's a lot of vested interests, right?
You have a listen. There's a it's a really tricky
thing because I'm, I'm a huge believer in therapeutics.
I'm a huge believer in talk therapy.
I've seen it work. You know I've had it and it's
worked for me, right. There's so many incredible
things out there today. Hyperbaric ketamine, DSR, you
know EMDR right here. Just there's research back,
science based results out there, OK.
But there's also things that hurt us that have become
mainstream society that we just accept.
Like, you know, marijuana has become ubiquitous and legalized
in States and almost like the government's encouraging us to
use that to self medicate. THC ravages the brain even worse
than alcohol and is associated with multiple cancers as is
alcohol. Right.
So but there are these wonderful therapeutics that don't have the
backlash. The way you have to look at DSR,
what Doctor Lipov's innovation is, you have to look at it the
way you look at a broken leg in relation to physical therapy.
Doctor Luke Publics to give this example of a broken computer
chip which he can elaborate when I'm done.
If you try to run software at a broken chip or you try to do
physical therapy over a broken leg, you still have a non set
leg, you have a broken piece of hardware.
What the DSR is, it's the fundamental reason that we are
overwhelmed. So if we can, when we reset the
nervous system, then we can run the software, we can do that,
all these other therapies that work.
But the answer to that question, which is such a great question,
you know, how come we're having such a hard time changing the
name is, you know, there's vested interests and you know
that. You know, like Doctor Lipop will
tell you the story of Summer Weiss when I'm done.
But, you know, you have a medical industrial complex.
You have a psychology and psychiatric industrial complex
where they people have done things a certain way for a very,
very, very long time. And you come along and you say,
hey, it's not all this complicated stuff over here.
We can see what this is. We can see it on a brain scan,
OK. And this fixes 70% overnight.
And then you could deal with the other 30%, right.
But when you fly in the face of convention, it just there's too
many structures in place. And you know, I'll turn this
over to Eugene, but you know, the the one example that I'll
give is Max Planck. The Nobel Prize from in in
physics in the 1940s said that medical innovation is one in
funerals. You have to wait for your
opponents or your naysayers to die.
There's too much convention and structure in place.
And it's like if you've been doing psychotherapy for 30
years, which I believe works, but I don't think it's very
good. It's working very well over a
shot nervous system. OK.
If you've been doing psychotherapy for 30 years.
And then, you know, Eugene Lipaugh comes along and says,
hey, that's not working because you're doing it over a broken
chip, Right. Maybe you don't want to hear
that, right. Right.
So you're like you're that. That's part of what I think is
the issue. And I think, you know, Eugene
talks about it being a credibility problem.
And I think he's right about that too.
But I think that, you know, that's, you know, the military
is doing 20 to 30,000 of these a year.
Obama endorsed this thing back in 2008.
OK, there, right now there's a $5,000,000 NYU study, the Doctor
Lipov range, that will prove this on an fMRI study that no
one will ever disagree with it, you know will ever disagree with
it. There's a multi billion dollar
private equity firm opening up clinics all over the world and
with 35 clinics in the United States, the Stella Center in
which Doctor Lipov is the Chief Medical Officer.
So this is true and it's coming. So let's just peel the curtain
back on this, this therapy. Exactly what does this protocol
look like, the DSR protocol? I just want to kind of figure
out what this looks like in its totality here.
Yeah, sure. Simple.
So patient comes in. Obviously we did all the usual
stuff. We put an IV in their arm
safety. About 2/3 of the people want to
go to sleep. When I had mine down, I went to
sleep. I was.
I didn't do my own patient. Lies down on the bed.
We scan. Using ultrasound, Ultrasound
will tell us where the blood vessels are, where the bones
are, where everything is at, which is really nice, and then
we clean the neck. Then I use a special it's called
echogenic needle, meaning I can see it easily under ultrasound.
And then we're putting you on the right spot.
Put the local nesthetic in there, one spot, then second
spot, and we're done. It takes about my hands 5-7
minutes to do everything and the results a lot of times are seen
in 15 minutes. And how long do those results
last typically? Variable We've had people Long's
outlier right now, 17 years. It depends on three things.
Depends. Genetics.
It depends on what kind of aftercare people do.
Do they do psychotherapy? Do they do meditation?
Do they take care of themselves? And #3 what happens to them?
We had a classic example of a gentleman who was a policeman
for Chicago and he was doing great for a year and then he had
to shoot somebody. Line of duty.
He had to come back. And and how?
Like at what point would there be a good candidate for this?
Like is is a. A young teenage girl that
watches too much social media and, you know, aggravating films
needing this right off the bat or.
Somebody OK, let me give you an answer to that.
There are a couple answers to that.
Number one, you're asking where does, which is the best
population this procedure works for?
Is that a fair question? Yeah, sure.
OK, so I actually wrote a nut column on.
So you know you're getting older when you can quote a bunch of
your own literature, other people's literature.
Anyway, in 2022, those people are who are sciency geeks.
If you want to go on my website, drujulipup.com, you can download
those articles I've talkedaboutthe.com that we're
alluding to right now was published in 2022.
We looked at 22 different types of trauma and about 250 people,
it looks like. The DSR works across the board
and trauma. So what type of trauma is there
is no real difference in response from militated sexual
abuse to neglect and so on. So that's one answer to the way
I think one of the questions you're asking is how do you
select the people who would be good candidates?
So I'm very proud to say in Stella, where I'm a Chief
Medical Officer, for we have a cadre of nurse practitioner,
psychologist. Who are the psychiatrists who
are doing assessment of everyone?
But if you want to do quick and simple question, you can go on
Google and look up PCL Five. It stands for PTSD Checklist.
If you're about 35, then you're a candidate.
It's that simple. Obviously if somebody's really
sick and they have high blood pressure out of control or they
have bleeding problems, they're not candidates.
But short of that, I've I've treated children as young as
eight and adults as old as 80. And is this something that they
just do through their insurance provider or they're able to go
in and pay this out of pocket? Does this cost prohibitive to a
lot of people? Like how does that work?
OK, that's three questions in there.
I'm going to break them out. A the insurance.
Well, you know, I'm used to being sciencey, so science you
have to be, yeah. I mean, it doesn't cost a lot.
And if you amortize it over your lifetime, it's pennies.
If you don't mind, let let let me give you a direct answer,
Jamie. I I like giving direct answers.
You got it. Fair question.
I'm going to give you a fair answer.
So a insurance doesn't cover it yet.
We've been making significant progress in the last six months,
potentially self insured entities that seem to.
Like this idea, the cost and I don't quite know exactly what
that is, but I think it's maybe 1800 per injection.
And a lot of times we do one or two injections, 2 would be the
other side. So we do 2 injects on one side,
we wait at least a day see how they do, we do the other side.
So I think everything together is probably 3K, but I'm not
quite sure that would have to. If you look at stellacenter.com
that would have pricing and everything.
Gotcha. OK.
And are there any adverse effects like if if somebody was
to have this this local anaesthetic, this injection down
regulates the release of norepinephrine, but the next day
they actually need a bump of norepinephrine, is that going to
inhibit that? So let me give you got 2 answers
that. So I think you asked actually
two questions there. I'll split them out too.
So Stella can have or DSR can have negative side effects.
So I'll give you an answer to that because somewhat over the
line you're going to need to ask that question anyway.
So the answer is there was a study done in Germany, country
of Germany in 1992 before ultrasounds before guidance.
It's not as safe as it is now. And people found they had seven
people had seizures because they hit the blood vessel and nine
had pneumothoric, which is air in the lung out of 45,000,
nobody died, so. With ultrasound it should be
much less and it's much safer and you can because you can
actually see where everything is, which is much better.
So to give you a direct answer as far as if they need to get
going, will they be able to do so?
That is number one question special Forces guys ask me,
because to them it's life and death, right?
They cannot be out there smelling flowers when they're in
military action. Right.
What they're finding is they're actually better because if you
think about it, if you are hyper active, hyper vigilant and then
you're frenetic, right, you're looking everywhere at once what
you need to do, especially if you're SF or SOF, you need to be
hyper focused and people seem to be much more focused.
They can definitely get going and but they do have their own
terms. They're not getting going
because they can't sleep. They're the bouncing of the
walls are wrapped. If you look at the real
professionals, they sit there and then when they need to do
what they need to do, then they can actually do it very well,
the better I think. Yeah, I know.
That makes. Little sense.
I have a question Doctor Lipoff. Sure.
When I say that, you know, I think this is the primary
mechanism that supersedes all other mechanisms and I'm a big
believer in brain health and therapeutics.
There's incredible therapeutics out there.
A Do you agree with me? And if the answer And if you
know and if not, why? And if yes, why?
That's two questions too, Jamie. All right.
So, so the answer is I think I, I I don't like, you know, you've
known me long enough. I don't like being boastful.
Anybody could stand there and say I'm the most smartest person
in the world. Usually is not.
Even if they're not, nobody wants to deal with them.
Oh, I'm talking about science. Doctor Lipov.
I talk about science. I'm asking about the chip.
Is, you know, can you give your chip analogy?
Is the chip analogy what's happening with people?
Yeah, this is, well, it's well, it's A&S You're talking about
autonomic nervous system. There are two there's fight and
flight, and there's vagal system.
I'm talking about Fight or Flight.
So Fight and Flight is 1 vagal system another.
My point both have to be you can't just say Sympathetic is
the only thing. Because if you think about it,
if I activate sympathetic system, you're gonna be running
around crazy. If you activate the Vagus,
you're gonna fall down dead because it's gonna stop your
heart. Yeah, but you should know that
the leading neuroscientists in the world.
Support his work if you know from doctor Frank Ochberg who's
who found coined PTSI injury versus disorder, which is
destigmatizing to Stephen Porges, the author of Polyvagal
Theory and the Kinsey Chair of Trauma Research at the Kinsey
Institute. The the the chair of the trauma
research at the Kinsey Institute to Don Faber, who is probably
the most accredited forensic psychiatrist in the United
States and served as Director of Behavioral Health for all of
Humana. To you know, the.
The amount of neuroscientists and incredible minds that
support doctors worth are the Doctor Lipov's innovation of the
smartest, most engaged people in the world.
So the answer Jamie. I I think I I gave my best
answer. I'm not sure if the.
Thing Can you give him the? I'm asking you.
I'm asking you to give Robert in the audience either.
The doing the software chip example or the broken leg
example from your Oh no absolutely.
So fight and flight system over activation basically activates
the limbic system. And I always say limbic system
isn't happy. Nobody's happy because such a
basic part of the body it needs to become to be functional human
being, you need a limbic system is what sits below the neocortex
which does our higher functions. So the bottom line is, you know,
to be able to sleep in a function, to be able to have
normal sexual function, in order to be able to eat, fight and
flight, system needs to be calm and collected.
Yeah, I agree there for sure. So where, where do you see this
going in the future? Like, is this something that
people use as like a frontline defense against chronic stress?
Like they they feel elevated stress, they automatically go
and get one of these routines scheduled and and go through
that in tandem with? Meditation, mindfulness, all
that good stuff or or what do you see it going in the future?
Yeah, let's talk, let's talk. In 10 years, what do you think?
1015 years. So I'm gonna be working on a
device that will tell somebody if their system sympathetic
system is overactive, cuz I'd like a biological device that
will tell us that. And I think that's possible.
I have actually. I'm meeting with a group on next
Wednesday regarding that type of device.
So if I can have, I would like PTSD or PTSI assessment to be
the 5th lightest side. You come and see a doctor, they
check your blood pressure, they check your pulse, blah blah
blah. And you go you have PTSD, PTSI,
Let's see if we can help you with that.
So first diagnosis, always in medicine, you don't wanna shoot
AIM, you wanna aim, shoot. So first diagnostic, second of
all, I think it's gonna be much more accepted and it's going to
be integral part of all the new things coming online such as
TMS, such as psilocybin, such as drugs like that.
I think there's going to be a significant shift in psychiatric
drugs currently used to a more effective because now people are
looking for a rapidly acting prolonged impact with high
compliance because coming in and having an injection from me or
my associates, it's no big deal. You don't have to keep taking
meds for next eight weeks. If it if it starts to work, this
takes 8 weeks to 3-4 months, you know that that's really is.
People are not straight away from that.
If you he's basically saying if you use resilience techniques,
this thing can last for a long time if not forever.
But you need to take care of it. Also, let me finish my future
prediction. OK.
And then I want to ask you a
question. OK, sure, sure, sure.
Anyway, so and the other thing is like for example in combat,
I've been trying to train a bunch of ducks from Ukraine to
start doing this and I've had a devil over time doing that.
I've had a number of my friends are trying to connect me.
It's been difficult but in a war-torn country it is a
complete disaster. What's going on?
Mental health. And it's gonna be, even if war
stops today, it's still gonna be a disaster that will have a very
long tail. So I think there is a potential
of societal level intervention using that being human, being
being robotics, which I have actually planned for long term
to produce robotics to be able to use in battlefields and in
sites of disaster. So that's all that's possible.
I mean, technologically everything I'm describing is
available today off the shelf. All that's missing is the will.
Doctor Lipov. Can you, can you tell Robert in
our audience about Semmelweis? Oh yeah, it's my favorite story
actually. So people have asked me, so how
did you survive through all this crazy stuff with people?
You know I've had people attack me in the press and all type of
interesting things so that you know it's like my answer is at
least I'm not over wise which I already pronounce it egon so.
Semmelweis several ways, yeah. So that physician was born
hungry. He went to Vienna to be to
medical school, and he was observing.
He found that when women gave birth at home, the chance of
death was 1/3, as opposed to dying in a house delivering
children in the hospital. So he tried to figure it out.
Then he wrote papers on that. He wrote a book on that and then
he went to the doctor's place. He said something is wrong,
you're transmitting something and you're killing people.
And then he followed ducks around.
Turns out in that age they would go dissect dead people, do
autopsies and run over and deliver kids.
So you know, and in that respect I was is pretty obvious.
So what happens with him is they put so much pressure on him.
He had a psychiatric breakdown, they put him in a psych ward and
he was beaten to death within a month of admission. 20 years
after death, he was pronounced savior of babies.
So that has really been an inspiration for me that I'm
still kicking and I'm still have a chance to change what I'm
trying to do within my lifetime. I don't have to die first.
Yeah, yeah. And I'm familiar with with his
story and it's interesting, you know, like the the the leaps and
bounds that we make when we discover what what is the
driving factor for time, you know, for some of these deaths.
So I think what you're doing is certainly.
On the tip of the spear, and it seems like it's much, much less
invasive and certainly more empowering than just telling
people that they've got this disorder they can't do anything
with. I mean, who wants to hear that
and all of? The Yeah, it's a double.
It's a double injury, Robert, right.
It's another injury. And I think when you look at
what's happening with like the opioid crisis and people self
medicating through significantly unhealthier means like anything
that can you know, move the needle in the right direction
from that. I'm in full support of.
You know, it's. Yeah, I mean I'd like Doctor
Lipov to end with his broken leg analogy because it is his
innovation. But, you know, I was talking to
the guy, the, the CEO of the private equity firm that started
these seller centers all over the world.
And you know, I asked him, you know, he's a data guy And I
asked him, you know, do you think that I'm hyperbolic?
Do you when I say to you that? That there's nothing else that
is more fundamental to what can, you know, improve a person based
on the effort and time that exists and how profound that
improvement can be in such a short period of time.
When I say it's the fundamental fundamental mechanism, you know,
in in the book The invisible machine, and we call it the
invisible machine because this is a simple mechanism, that's
you, we just can't see it. But it's there like a broken leg
which you can see. You know, do you think that
that's true, like as we as I claimed in the book or we
claimed in the book, You know, there's things I could say as an
artist that maybe a scientist is not going to say, even if they
believe them. OK.
Or do you think I was hyperbolic?
And he said to me, Line them up, Jamie, You tell me anything that
can do anything close to this and give someone hope and give
someone a chance in a day or two.
There's nothing. And so I would like, you know,
Doctor Lipop, to explain, you know, why we called the book The
Invisible Machine and, you know, the broken leg analogy that he
often uses. Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about the book for sure. I want to hear about this so
really quickly. So invisible machine, It's it
stands for basically sympathetic system.
Most people don't think about it, but if you dissect any blood
vessel, if you use a microscope, you can't really see it.
You'll see little fiber, sympathetic fibers, which is
really interesting. You can see a stellar ganglion,
but you need to actually operate and open up the neck, which most
people don't like. But basically the broken leg
analogy is that to me as a pain physician who's done years of
this, it's pretty straightforward.
If sympathetic system is overactive, you need to calm it
down South. To me it's no different.
You can actually measure that using thermometers and stuff
like that. So if you can scan a brain and
say, hey, this is going on, all you need to do is treat it.
And especially dealing with special forces guys and women,
what's interesting there is like, if they go, you mean
there's somebody actually inside of me that's really off and you
can reverse it? Yeah, absolutely.
Here's the studies. This is based on this and this
is based on that. It's no different.
As opposed to somebody saying you have this disorder and it's
going to be forever, you'll never get better.
That's just I think that's criminal to do.
But broken leg, if you take an X-ray, I haven't seen one
person. I used to be the yard dog before
and trauma surgeon before I got into pain and the seizure.
You know if you show somebody a broken leg on X-ray, they go,
OK, it hurts every time I step, OK how about a cast?
OK. There's no problem.
There's no no drama, no, no, no nothing, right.
There's no problem going on there.
And actually the physician, it's much easier because the the
difference if you look at physicians in 17th century, the
way they treated the PTSD, whatever it was called then and
it was called battle tremble or something like that, it was
similar. You know, it's like put them in
a quiet room, do this. We didn't then you have meds,
but they would say, you know, it's like everything's going to
be fine. Those are prelude to psychiatric
interventions and unfortunately treatments would not be very
effective and PTSD has been went out forever.
So Roman soldiers originally I think was the first time they
described it in modern era, first modern era term came from
civil war, it was called soldier's heart and the
scripture was not a disorder. Basically they describe people
who are faintly looking, they had far away looks, they
couldn't sleep basically observation what's a disorder?
I have no idea what disorder respectly, I just don't
understand the term. Yeah, well, So what is the main?
Roadblock, bottleneck that you are facing currently like what
what's keeping this? We kind of talked a little bit
about some of the the bureaucratic tape that is hard
to cut through as to why this is not more mainstream.
But like on a on a specific level with y'all currently, what
are y'all facing right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that.
That's a simple question. There are a couple of things.
One, I was told that I have a graduality problem.
It's very hard to believe that something has been done since
1926. Somebody like me, who's not from
Harvard or some massive institution, came up with the
use of that. And I have explanation for that.
So one, it's hard to believe. Two, it's in order to accept it
fully, you need to start thinking.
You need to marry psychiatry and biology, neuropsychiatry,
neurobiology, genetics, psychogenetic, all of that which
is already here. But the people who hold the
reins are psychiatrists. Some of them are totally on
board and some of them going woah, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no. This is working great.
What would it be? Why are we changing anything?
You know, I'd say I used to be a big fan of psych analysis when I
was in my 20s, but I'm not anymore.
So I think what I my hope, my firm hope is that the study done
by NYU, which is NASA institution done with all the
right things, which is functional MRI and everything
else, if they demonstrate conclusively that there's a
massive change or significant change that's proportional to
what we actually see in behavior, then I think
roadblocks will be going away. Then psychiatrists will embrace
it. In fact, my biggest opponent
shall we say, in whose psychiatrist in the Navy wrote a
pretty interesting study which was inaccurate and poorly done.
And then I said, you know, it's like that study means nothing.
And I wrote letters to the editor and they refused my
letters. It was a complete crazy mess, he
went on, and he will went on to learn how to do Style Gangdam
blog, which I find the most interesting kind of funny.
And when does that study get published?
Tentatively, we may get halfway report in Q2Q3 next year.
It's been going on for a bit in New York.
So if that comes out and it shows what I hope it will show
that would be, I think that will be a massive change.
Not only I think it will save lives for one, even if that's
not adopted fully SGB, but if people really embrace the
conversation, PKSI, PKSI, then I think there's gonna be a huge
change from people saying, wait, hold on, I actually have a brain
change. I can actually know about the
brain change. I expect biological treatments
and somebody will figure out biological treatments and I hope
DSR is going to be a big part of it.
There are other ones out there, TMS, which is basically way to
change the brain, use electrical waves and things like that.
I think psilocybin has a lot of potential and things like that.
But I think expectation, one of the big massive things may
change is expectational change. Instead of living with a
disorder the rest of your life, thinking about killing yourself
every day, you can say I'll get treated.
I understand my problem, OK? It's real.
It's not because I'm weak or because I'm a woman or because
I'm this because I'm that. It just it's gonna be a broken
leg. It's gonna be normal.
You're gonna go see a doc. And God willing, I'll be able to
make the device. He'll be able to predict who's
gonna do best with the Sr. I think it's gonna change the
landscape of psychiatry and psychology and mental health
forever. Well, I'm certainly hopeful that
it's empowering. You know, like if people have an
option or an outlet that they can use to get some forward
momentum going and then be hopefully more in tune with what
they can do proactively on their end as an individual.
I mean, I think that's all great and I think that y'all are being
innovative in trying to figure out solutions to go against the
grand the status quo, because the status quo is certainly
trending in the wrong direction and people seem to be struggling
with this more so than ever now. So I think.
You know, y'all looking outside the boxes is paramount.
Yeah, just keep in mind COVID made mental health mark the
worst. What's interesting is that I
wrote a paper on that hasn't gotten published yet, but COVID
itself activates and fight a flood system, so COVID virus
itself can actually cause PTSD by activating the invisible
machine. Isn't that weird?
Mm hmm. I I do think there's a little
bit of humility, you know, in that with Doctor Labat, you know
is saying in the sense that you know TMS, psilocybin, you can do
those things and then you're going to get benefit from them.
But you're still going to have an the sprouting and you're
still going to have a broken leg.
You can't see which is fundamental.
Your fundamental symptoms are coming from that.
So you're going to get way more out of TMS and you're going to
get way more out of suicide. And if you do this first, I I
had AI was in Fort Bragg and having this conversation with a
very esteemed psychologists who've been brought in to treat
special Forces fighters. And he was in the room fighting
me, saying, Amy, there's all these other things like TMS and
this and that and the thing I do and.
You know, how can you say this is the, you know, she was having
an argue with me and I on camera and I said, OK, well let me ask
you this. I don't want to say who she is,
but it's in the book. OK.
Which if you, if you have any suspicion that what we're saying
is true, read the book. I think anybody.
There's no way you could read The Invisible Machine.
It's reads like a novel, and there's and there's a lot of
science in it, and there's no way you could read that book and
not know, at least by the end of that book that what you're
experiencing from the effects of trauma are 100% biological.
OK, but I said to this psychologist, OK, there are all
these other things, but what if somebody was in really bad shape
and they were struggling? What should they do first?
And then there was a long pause and she said, OK, fair play,
they should do this. So Jamie, I have to tell you a
compliment. So we have had at least five,
maybe 7 people who this book has saved their lives because
they're at it. And they came and treated and
they said that that opened my eyes.
Well, I'm certainly intrigued, but I'll definitely be reading
the book. Is that is that the the best
place to to get the the foundation here?
Read the book The Invisible Machine.
Yeah, I'm getting a. Broad picture if you're
interested in science, the articles I I, you know I I was.
I didn't put too much science in it.
Look up my website if you guys can hold on.
I I have a couple more pictures, Jamie, and I'll leave it.
You got it. So if you go on to its ptsi.com,
that's kind of my we're trying to get people to write as many
letters as I can. They can leave it on my website,
I'll send boxes hopefully to American Psychiatric Station.
So there you go. Perfect, perfect.
And I will link out to the website as well and make these
people listening to find you in the book.
Were you about to say something there as well?
Go ahead, Jamie. I'm done.
Yeah. The book is available at Barnes
and Noble. Get it?
At any Barnes and Noble in America.
It's on Amazon. It recently won the National
Indie Excellence Award. I'm not interested.
You know, I'm not selling a book.
I'm trying to put the truth out there.
OK. So yeah, I mean, I've had.
I get at least an e-mail a week from someone and and again this
is my I have a few books coming out.
I have a children's book coming out in 2 weeks called a kids
book about resilience. I have other books coming out.
I have my previous books. I I've never had anything like
this. I get an e-mail from around the
world or the country a week from someone that read the book, went
and got the treatment and had that, had tried everything and
they got their life back. It's it's that remarkable.
It's so remarkable when you see people wake up from it.
The person's only received a local anesthetic, the same two
dollar amount of bufivican that goes into an epidural because it
wears off fast, right. So this person is not on drugs
when they wake up because they're able to channel their
emotions. Watch Doctor Lipov gets to see
people wake up or get this, you know, you know 10 minutes later
have this treatment kick in every single day and you know
just it's astonishing to see it happen in real time for people
that have lost hope. You know, it's it's it's or just
that have carried the weight. You know, I almost feel like
sometimes depression isn't a real symptom.
Depression is what you feel from the weight of carrying all the
other symptoms, the hyper vigilance and the anxiety and
the sense of doom and the hyper arousal we have to in the
reactivity. You know when you carry those
things and the depression is what you feel.
So yeah that's my that's that's what you know the military
thanked the military for you know study.
You know has already studied this and has has seen these
results preliminary league. You know Olympic athletes use
this to get the response time back after an accident.
This is in the world, it's mainstream, it's normal and it's
and I believe I'm hopefully in 5-10 years that it's as popular
as LASIK and like Doctor, Lipov said, people don't have to live
their life dealing with something for the rest of their
life, but can go back to who they are without trauma.
Well, there are a few things more fulfilling than to see
someone you know receive hope and see the light in their eyes
brighten back up again. So I applaud y'all both for
striving to make that a reality in more mainstream society.
So by all means, keep doing what you're doing.
Keep keep fighting the good fighting, you know, being on the
tip of the spear and thinking innovatively.
Around all these challenges, I certainly appreciate it.
I'm intrigued by it. I'll be reading the book, and if
there's anything I can do to help spread the message, by all
means just let me know. I love it.
And the only thing we we missed is I wish I'd asked Eugene to
talk about an overactive, sympathetic in weight gain.
But you know, I think you could probably clean that from the
book. Yeah, also there is an audio
book by the way. I love audio books, so if you're
into that, it's available. Awesome.
Well, I would. There are basic.
Robert, this has been an amazing conversation.
Seriously, I thank you so much for having you.
Hey, it's my pleasure, my pleasure.
It's always interesting for me to chat with people that are
doing things that are outside the box, which y'all two are
both most certainly doing. So I appreciate that and I
appreciate y'all taking the time.
So until next time, y'all just keep changing outside the box.
But it's inside the box. But I hear, I hear you and thank
you. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
All right, y'all, take care. Thank you.
Take care.