TBI, PTSD, and Mental Resilience in AFSPECWAR
EPISODE 38
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THIS WEEK THE ONESREADY CREW IS JOINED BY DR. PATE. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’RE CRAZY, WHAT TO DO ABOUT, AND YOGA, THIS IS THE EPISODE FOR YOU. LISTEN UP AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE YOUR MIND AND BODY WORK FOR YOU.
INTRO
Intro 00:02
You're listening to the Ones Ready podcast, a team of Air Force Special Operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience, as well as a decade of selection instructor experience. If you're tired of settling, and you want to do something you truly believe in, you're in the right place. Now, here's your favorite CCT personality, JTAC extraordinaire, embracer of the ridiculous face, and like the shortest operator you'll ever meet Peaches.
Peaches 00:27
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Ones Ready podcast. We're happy that you joined us today. Today we have a special guest Dr. Kate Pate. She is a neuroscientist, a combat trauma medical researcher and she's also the CEO and co-founder of the unfortunately named Corona medical. So, before we go on, and we have you introduce yourself and start with the questions and everything, we want to cover at least one of our partners. So, we're going to talk about Hoist today. So, with hoist you get your IV level hydration in one bottle ready to go. There's no mixing tastes great chilled and I tell you what the flavors are incredible drinking on a Peach Mango right now.
Aaron 01:13
Dragon Fruit I got to go dragon fruit. You know what's funny is it's the only it's the only one of these drinks I've ever found that I can drink mid workout. So, I drank one mid workout the other day. It's just great. Like, it's not too sugary or whatever. I actually, I was pleasantly surprised by that.
Peaches 01:27
Yep. Yeah, it's not it's not real thick, syrupy. It's got seven grams of carbs, seven grams of sugar in per serving. So, it's good to go. And if you guys want to go check them out, go to drinkhoist.com and then use the promo code ONESREADY and that'll get you a discount and they are pretty quick at shipping out those cases. So, like we always do, we want to thank you for your support and thank you for listening. You guys are the whole reason why we do this. For this episode, in particular, it's going to be in Important for, you know, recruits and candidates to pay attention to it. But at the same time as someone like the all of us on here that have been in the military for what at least 15 years at this point, I think Brian, right. Yep. Yeah. So, 15 years, jumping out of planes faster open, getting our bells rung, you know, some of us, if not all of us have had IEDs. And the whole deal so we deal with traumatic brain injury. Well, this is also important if you're a team guy that's out there, whether you're, whether you're on a team or not really, because if you hit your noggin, you could be in The Hurt Locker. So that's why we want to cover that today. And Dr. Pate is actually an expert on it. So, could you give us some of the details about your background and how you ended up being a mental health expert?
DR. PATE’S BACKGROUND
Dr. Pate 02:54
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I don't know that I would consider myself an expert at this time. point I think the only thing I'm an expert in is my own experience. But I, you know, I try to learn as much as I can and, and continue to pick up new information and try and you know, disseminate that out to the public and integrate it into my own life. But that said, I'm not a clinical psychologist or a mental health counselor. So, for anyone listening, this is coming from the perspective of my life lived, but also from my training as a neurophysiologist, which started off with that got a PhD from the University of Florida and basically neurophysiology for those of you listening, it's the study of the brain body connection. And for me, the first place that I started to explore that was like with the breath, so respiratory system and how that connection could influence physiology and breath could also influence your stress response system. And from there, I branched out. I have tons of interests, and I just decided to pursue them all. So, went into a bunch of different areas. neuro trauma was always of interest to me. So, I definitely focused on that for part of my postdoctoral research but I also studied everything else from cancer and radiation biology to lung infection and arthritis. And just a ton of other areas. And neuro trauma was always the area most interesting to me. And I studied traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury, and basically the neuro inflammation and redox biology changes that happen after some sort of event, a neuro traumatic event, and ways to potentially like mitigate that inflammation, posted three, and then from there, I actually went to teach at the medical school here in Colorado, and I taught first and second year phys, primarily respiratory and renal, but it was in a bunch of other areas as well and was the Director of Research there and then through all of the work that I had been doing, I cross paths with them. In industry, and they were actually developing a Military Medical Research Program. But this is an aerospace engineering firm. So, they didn't really know what they were doing. They were just like, we need help. Anyone in the medical field could help us. That'd be great. And so, my background, I come from military family and had been doing tons of research in the medical arena. So, it was a nice transition for me to be able to take my career and focus on my passion of working with the military and turn that into like a new career path for me. So, I left academia and went into industry, and from there basically started this combat casualty Care Research Program. And after a couple years, my business partner and I decided to split it out into Coruna, not Corona medical. And right now, we've got some government funding to study new research ideas and products for Battlefield trauma. So, like physical trauma, not psychological trauma at this stage. And yeah, we've been doing that and focused on that. But because of the work that I've been doing in this military arena, and because my one of my brothers is a 12 year veteran, I just crossed paths with a lot of folks in both active duty and in the veteran space and got pulled into some nonprofits and have been for the past few years really diving in deep with this whole mental health topic through these different organizations and really trying to wrap my head and hands around this extremely complex and difficult and extremely important subject.
Peaches 06:33
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I was going to ask what drew you to veterans, but that kind of makes sense with your family and everything. So, you guys you do these kinds of retreats and I won't go into details about them because I know that it's somewhat of a polarizing topic discussion. So, I won't necessarily go into detail on those but like, you guys, help veterans all the time. You have retreats and you have, you know, care camps or whatever, you know, it's probably a poor choice of words. But like today, how many veterans Do you think that you've, you've treated so far that have TBIs and PTSD?
Dr. Pate 07:15
Yeah, that's a really good question. And to be honest, I don't know the answer to that, because there's been so. So these different organizations I work with, focus on different aspects of like, they're all kind of alternative ways of addressing mental health, and enabling people to like, rather than thinking about it as like me or my team, treating people think about it as like us, enabling people to sort of like treat themselves if you will. And so there's been different approaches, retreats, certainly, there are and that's an organization called heroic hearts project, but then there's other organizations as well that do more trying to bring awareness to like physical movement and Alternative practices like yoga, and breath work, even adventure therapy and all these different organizations are actually veteran founded and what they've been doing is trying to like they found something that worked for them to address their own mental health issues. And then they just want to share that with others. And so, through my all my volunteer work with these different organizations, there have been I just tons honestly tons of veterans who have gone through the programs and had success in a variety of ways. And I think one of the most difficult things that we've seen success in is PTSD is one area. There have been bad. We've gone through the program with it. That's a big one pretty severe suicidal ideation and depression and nothing else has worked. They've gone to see the VA and the story there is very common for a small percentage of people, I think that those things can be effective, but For the majority of people, I think they're more, they more offset your normal mental health and physiology than you're trying to kind of come back from all of that. Which is why I think there's such a draw to these alternative therapies because the traditional paths just aren't working for folks. And when you have something like a TBI underlying all of these other mental health issues, it's a really complex thing. And we don't really know the right medications for folks like that. And so, it's really like a trial and error for people and men and women become guinea pigs, and that is, you know, not helpful at all. So, it becomes a really complex process, which is why all these different organizations are popping up within the veteran community and outside of it to really provide assistance to other folks who might be struggling in a similar way and just need another tool in the toolbox. And I don't think that there's one thing that really solves the problems for anyone, I think gets, like you just throw all of the tools that you can at it. And hopefully each piece is addressed in some way with one of those tools that you have.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Peaches 10:09
Yeah, and I like that kind of mindset of, we're going to show you the tools, alternative medicine to help yourself. So, I mean, I see a chiropractor. I don't honestly think it's doing anything; it feels good. But if I go do a month worth of yoga, then I mean, I feel better. I have zero back pain at that point, you know?
Aaron 10:33
Doc, I wanted to I wanted to talk to you about this too, because I'm a big yoga guy like if I don't do my normal so I you know, do Onnit durability flows and stuff like that. And if I don't, I can feel a noticeable difference. And I also noticed other benefits as well like with stress tolerance and those that stuff that you were talking about, can you kind of take us through, you know, if you could give kind of that holistic recommendation like Hey, guys, this is the baseline if you could do these things would it be learning how to how to breathe or meditating or maybe doing a yoga practice what would be kind of that baseline prescription that you would you want people to start at before they got all the way to the to the back end? Which is kind of you on the very far end?
Dr. Pate 11:09
Yeah, no, that's a that's a really good question. Because I think the idea is like preventing, like fortifying people to maybe avoid getting to that really difficult place. But if you're in that difficult place, like these things also still work and would apply. I think, one of the hardest things for folks who have been trained to ignore their own pain for this greater, you know, mission or whatever it might be people who are in the military or who are in you know, first responder situations or whatever, you have to kind of bury a lot of your stuff and you lose connection. Even just feeling into and understanding what's going on with yourself. Like there's a disconnect sometimes I think the first place that people should really focus Is cultivating awareness like not only what am I thinking, what are my thoughts like today? But like, actually how does it feel in my body not just like, oh, that super bad injury that hurts. It's like, I don't know, I never really think about what's happening in my calf muscle like, let's just go see what that feels like today. And, you know, in just like different sensations, that sounds super hokey, but just start there. Bring that, that, that awareness and that mindfulness. But from there, the idea or the goal would be to do things that are restorative to your nervous system. So, trying to focus on alternative therapies that promote like a parasympathetic or the rest and digest part of your nervous system. Because for people in this line of work, or similar lines of work, you are in a fight or flight sympathetic nervous system state, the majority of the time your stress response system is always turned on. And it has to be and I understand that and its part of what makes people effective, but you can only do that for so long before it has really detrimental consequences. And so really figuring out how to titrate, that high stress with some of these more restorative practices is really important. And the first thing that you can do that's accessible to everybody is breathing exercises. A lot of people don't like meditation, because it's like, it's just this weird concept of like, how does one...
Aaron 13:22
It's too far? Yeah, it's like it. Yeah, you can't sit there and pretend like that's a bridge too far for people to start on. Yeah. So, you believed in Santa Claus for like 15 years, but you can't believe in yourself for 10 seconds at a time get out of here.
13:34
Right? Well, it's weird too, because there's so many different types of meditation practices, and everybody's just like, it's too much. I don't you know; I don't understand it. But breath work is super simple. You can do what's called resonant breathing. So, if you have, you know, heart rate monitor that's really accurate, that can measure HRV you can use that there's some apps out there that basically help you promote a resonant state of breathing which basically as to maximize heart rate variability. And we know when somebody's super stressed out, your heart rate variability plummets, and you're just in a sympathetic overdrive. So, if you can focus on doing this resident breathing exercise, which is if you don't have any of this, you can kind of think about it as breathing, like inhaling for four or five seconds and then exhaling for five or six seconds. So just like a little bit longer on the exhale, but try to get six-ish breaths per minute. That that tends to promote heart rate variability, and also promote this parasympathetic nervous system state. So that's something that you can just do, set a little metronome on your phone and just start breathing. There are also a ton of these yoga apps out there and meditation. So like Headspace, I know a lot of people are on that program. And it's makes it super simple. Where you can take something that you wouldn't normally have access to, but now you can just take, even if it honestly like five minutes, three minutes, like whatever you can start with. Everybody's all over the place. Especially folks that TBI is like, your ability to focus and stay present is severely diminished a lot of times and you got to start where you're at, you can't just shoot for an hour of meditation, you're going to lose your mind. So, start small start where you're at and then gradually increase your tolerance over time. It's like building CO2 tolerance, just do the same thing for mental health and your ability to focus and cultivate awareness. You know, yoga, obviously is a great one that's super important, especially for what I meant...out there, that nervous system but also just people who've experienced trauma. really learning how to be in your body in the like physical vehicle that has actually experienced trauma can actually be really healing for people. And exercise is another one cardiovascular exercise in particular, especially for people with TBIs because of the ability to promote to decrease them. From inflammation but to promote neural plasticity through upregulation of molecules like BDNF, which is really important for forming new synaptic connections in the brain and restoring some healthy the wiring of healthy circuits in the brain. Yeah, those are things like right at people's fingertips so they can start doing
Aaron 16:20
You tracking all this Trent. Can you give us a read back really quick just to let us know that you understood?
Trent 16:24
I'm trying your breathing. Exercise. And then something else and then yoga? I don't know, man. It was it was
Aaron 16:35
a little he's obviously got it. You know, the first time I started taking breathing seriously was when somebody explained it as the only thing in your body that's normally like completely automatic that you can take control over whenever you want. You can't take control over your heartbeat. You can't take control over any other bodily function at will, except for your breathing and that's why it's so important. It's obviously not Aaron Loves speaking I stole that from somebody else.
Brian 16:59
The first time I started Taking breathing seriously was one of me to INDOC and I could get it taken away. And I was like, Whoa, I don't want that anymore. Yeah, I didn't realize that I really needed that that much. Now,
Aaron 17:15
and now we've come full circle because we all agree that it's a crutch, you don't need it. You can you'll be totally fine with that. At least for so Doc., that's a that's kind of like the prescription for the for the very base level, right? Like, let's hope everybody does that. But let's say that there's the bridge, there's that line in your head, where you're like, Okay, I think I'm doing everything that I'm supposed to here. But I'm not really feeling like I'm doing everything that I should be. So how do they start looking for that professional help? Right? So, let's say you know, the mindfulness, the yoga, the breathing, they're doing what they're supposed to but they're still feeling like they got to reach out How's that? What would you What would you say is the first way that they reach out and talk to somebody about professional help?
PROFESSIONAL HEALTH
Dr. Pate 17:53
Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. I you know, I think that a lot of people miss trust mental health professionals. Because they've had bad experiences I certainly have I've probably been through, I don't know, countless therapists before you find the right one. And, you know, I know that a lot of people feel like they should only go see therapists when they're at rock bottom, but it's a maintenance thing. You know, you get you get your oil change before your car, you know, breaks down on the side of the road. Same thing with mental health. And I think that it's really important to find somebody even if it's not a mental health professional, but like somebody that you can trust that you can have that discussion with on a regular basis that is able to hold what you're, you know, you're letting out there. Not everybody is. But that's really important. And I think that people should seek maybe ask, you know, I think a lot of people are always asking friends, like, do you know of anyone good who can handle this, especially in this community, where experiences are really unique if you have a civilian therapist who has never been through any of the things that you guys have been through? I wouldn't say that they couldn't be an excellent mental health counselor or professional for you, I would just say that there are some things they're not going to be able to understand. And that can be really important for connection but for also working through what it is that you're working through. So, asking within the community, if somebody has a therapist that they've been working with, or a mental health professional that they've been working with can be helpful for people who are afraid to ask because I know that that carries with it a lot of stigma. And I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day, and he was saying, like, even in the team room, like no one talks about these things, because you're just afraid of getting the boot or you know, like it just it's like you're unstable and therefore undependable. So, you know, how do you how do you have those conversations without that fear? And I think that it, you just have to own it. You have to kind of strike out a little bit on your own and start exploring some other options. I mean, I think the best thing is to find a mental health professional that resonates with you that can understand what it is that you're experiencing. And, you know, you may have to try a couple before you find the right one. That's not uncommon. So, I would just encourage people to not give up, but to find somebody that they can, you know, see on.
Aaron 20:21
It's a relationship, you have to develop it. Like anything else.
Trent 20:27
Absolutely. My first mental health professional ever saw was a tech sergeant that had similar experiences to me, you know, and it helps you open up and go down that path and start talking about the things that you might not even recognize you've buried and put behind you, you know, and then just getting him getting me to open up a little bit, kind of paved the way for some more professional help in the in the future.
Dr. Pate 20:50
Yep. That's awesome. And that that's exactly that's, you know, finding people with relatable experiences, who you can share things with is really important. And I think That's also just a part of general like human healing, where we were tribal, like in historically, we're a tribal species. And this is stuff that, you know, you go through difficulty you share with your brothers and sisters and like the whole community would hold it for you. And now everybody's carrying these burdens completely alone in silence, and its crushing people. And it's because we weren't supposed to be doing it this way. And, you know, certain industries, certain professions make it difficult to be open, and I understand that, but, yeah, we got to put some other things in place to help make sure that people are going to be okay through all that.
Peaches 21:39
And especially with Corona right now. I mean, people are just kind of isolated and losing their mind not going outside. Yeah, people are yelling at each other just because they're not wearing masks. It's just crazy out there right now.
SUICIDE
Trent 22:13
I think that's a good segue though the alone and being crushed into the question and it's not a fun question to ask but something that affects all of us in the military and that's the suicide issue that we're having, you know, we all know people that have not been the success story that we are, and they've gone down that that road and, you know, they ended it all. So, for all of us that are, you know, and all of our teammates and all the candidates out there, you know, what are how do we how does someone get there, I guess or how, what do we do? How do we recognize it and what's the best way to get someone to off ramp that path?
Dr. Pate 22:50
Yeah. And suicide is poorly understood at this point. Sadly, it's like we just don't we don't know why some people go that route and others don't. I mean, there are things that we understand about it. Maybe some, some correlations with things like lack of social support is a huge one. PTSD is also associated with a higher suicide risk. brain injuries, various things that we can point to say, hey, this may not be a cause, but we see a pattern. It's something to have awareness around for your friends and your family. Of course, if they meet those criteria of like, they're alone. They've been through the shit, whatever it is, that's awareness that the rest of us need to have about the people in our circle, but we also need to bring that awareness to ourselves. And this is where keeping on top of your mental health and checking in noticing when you're going down into that spiral, and trying to stop that process for yourself or others before it gets to the point of no return. I think a lot of what feeds into it, as I mentioned before, is this lack of social support where we don't share the burden anymore, we are holding on to too much. That is, it's, we don't know how to manage it. We weren't taught that. And not only that, but in order to continue to function in the world in our jobs, we have to put on this brave face. And it's really an inauthentic part of ourselves that we're presenting to the world. Because if we were really true to what's happening, we would be honest, and say, Hey, this is what I'm dealing with. Instead, it's like, I'm super stoic. I'm super tough. I'm going to get through it. But it's this inauthentic self that we're presenting to the world. And I think that in and of itself is an injury to a person on a very deep level when you're not able to just be yourself and you're also holding on to these really heavy things. And so, social support is something that we absolutely have to improve upon. And it's not just you know, you see this on social media all the time, like text your body and let's talk about mental health and it's like, Hey, cool, yes, but also let's like, actually do something further just shooting off a text and checking that box like I checked in with so and so it's good or, you know, let's have a discussion around mental health. It's like we need to put things into place and take action. So, I think that those are those are really important things to keep in mind. I think the other thing to think about too is with our own mental health you know, we, we invest so much energy time into fortifying ourselves physically and mentally in some in some regards for the jobs that we do. But we don't often take that same approach to like emotional or overall mental health where we don't put the reps in and we sometimes need to like Goggin’s it a bit and take this like hardline approach to it's like tough love for yourself, where it's almost, you know, stop being Little bitch today, like go to the gym, you know, whatever it is like you got to sometimes just do that right? Yeah, I mean, you just have to take that approach. But there are other people who can't they can't snap themselves out of it like that it's not going to work because especially for people who have had TVs in the past, you don't just have this ability to kind of like, you know, slap yourself around and like get after it. It's a lot harder. And so maybe rather than this tough love hardline approach to what you're going through, maybe you actually need something gentler and maybe more compassion for what you're going through. And that it's again, it's like, what were what I was saying before about maybe taking three minutes to meditate instead of shooting for like a whole 60-minute session. Tiny little wins. You know, you just got to you got to do what you can. And for those who, and I'm right there with you for having experienced friends and family who have decided to take their own lives. It's so hard and you always blame yourself I could have done more I should have done more. And it's really difficult for me to wrap my mind around it because there's a huge part of me that says we can intervene, we can stop this with enough, you know, headway before somebody gets to that point, we can put in the work to make sure that never happens. But I think there's also this point where when someone has made that decision, there isn't anything that you could have said or done, and they move forward and that choice has been made. I think a lot of suicide attempts are really a cry for help as people have you know, heard it referred to before but it's, it's this acknowledgment of like, I don't see things getting better. My life is the absolute worst. It's so dark here and I don't want to go on I can't go on and I need somebody to come save me. And that's that that screen for connection and for support. That person wasn't feeling so for the unsuccessful attempts, those are more about people trying to receive help, you know, and that's the stuff that those are the people where we can intervene and, and do something. And I think again, just to beat the dead horse, this, this social support is like, the root of all of it. And then all of all of these other things that we mentioned before, really helped build and promote resilience. But, you know, suicide is definitely a difficult topic. And it's, it's been tough, especially as of late to see so many people and I think COVID has really played into that with this isolation. And, you know, for people who might seek support, they haven't been able to get it so.
Brian 28:40
Right. And I think a big thing in our community is that most people don't really say anything's a problem until the wheel falls off. And we're just like, Whoa, what just happened? Like why did this guy just freak out on everybody and you know, you know, storm into the team or storm out of the team room and he's just starting to drink all the time and he's just a different person now. So, it's difficult in that type. Team room like you were talking about situation where everyone wants to be a tough guy and it's, it's, you know, just kind of a culture, we're always competitive no one wants to be the guy who's the one that's, you know, holding everyone else back because he had to raise your hand and do whatever but, you know, that's part of the honesty that we were we always talk about and being able to talk to your teammates. So, kind of brings me into another topic here, similar, but along the same vein is just you know, we have a big audience that are prepping for selection and they're getting ready to go into this whole thing. And they see the end result of like, what we're talking about here like man, these guys must all be really messed up. Like I don't think that is the truth of the matter. You know, most of the guys are able to deal with it fairly well. And I'm what would you say for those guys that are coming in right now that they can do to build up the resilience and you know, if something happens just like if you know, an athlete, if something happens to them They've bounced back a lot quicker, or would you say for someone mental health wise that they can utilize whatever tools or anything to help bounce back a little bit quicker.
MENTAL RESILLIENCE
Dr. Pate 30:11
I would say put in as much effort to your willingness to embrace emotional discomfort as you are to your physical discomfort. Because that isn't something that we pay attention to. And while people are training their asses off every you know waking moment of concentration into trying to achieve this goal, don't leave out this other piece. And everybody has something to pull from, like anyone who's joining the military has at least 18 years of life lived and a lot of for a lot of people. Those are the most traumatic, to be honest. I mean, for a lot of people, first 18 years of their lives are worse than anything else they're going to go through. So we all have stuff to draw on that we can use to a rope like remember, and Focus on the fact that like you made it through that, but also put yourself in situations that are going to be uncomfortable in the same way that you're like, I'm going to go swim in, you know, 40 degree water and I'm going to do whatever else you're going to do, right? That's extremely uncomfortable, but you know that this is coming in, you're prepping and fortifying yourself in the same way have difficult conversations, open up, be vulnerable, do all of these things and recognize like, you're building healthy neural pathways that are going to allow you to, if you experience trauma down the road, which you will, you're human, it's going to happen. You'll have a healthy wiring of your nervous system and your stress response because of those reps that you put in and your mental health training and your emotional discomfort training and all of those things that when you experience difficulty, and if it's so bad, it is a traumatic event. Your brain will not turn it into something like PTSD. Or if you do sustain a TBI, you have a really helpful Nervous System and you've put in enough work that you have this sort of bedrock of neuroplasticity to rely on. And to get back to so again, like, I know it's really a probably an abstract idea for a lot of people to think about how to do that, but really seek out like, all of these different difficult and different things that you can do that you wouldn't normally but that are on the same level as like your physical preparation.
Brian 32:29
Yeah, I think, you know, just going back to that whole thing, like when a person does experience TBI, and some of them some kind of event like that, do you think there's anything that they can do immediately after, like, you know, we do the downtime immediately after the deployments now we do the two weeks of recuperation and relaxation while we're in wherever we're stopping over. Is there anything that they can do during that time to just kind of decompress or anything specifically, I know some of the things like are talking to the group and We kind of share our experiences or debrief kind of everything that went on. Is there anything else specifically, because I know some guys, you know, stuff that happens when you're at selection, it can be fairly bad for some guys or even, you know, think back to basic training, we had some guys that, unfortunately, have a lower stress tolerance, and they just never experienced someone yelling at them before. So, they ended up just, you know, kind of having a bad day and having to be sent out of basic training. So, what can they do kind of in the moment of that they're getting yelled at?
Dr. Pate 34:03
Yeah, you know I think with regard to TBI, I think that there are absolutely things you can do, I think that one of most important things is rest following the injury, you know, you have this excitotoxic event in your brain essentially and you need to just let things kind of calmed down and stressing yourself further if your physical activity or mental, you know, focus or anything like that can be really challenging and detrimental for the brain in trying to recover and repair itself. So, rest is important after a certain period of time, cardiovascular exercise has been prescribed, certainly low impact, nothing like too intense. But the other thing I would tell people is as soon as you can, following that kind of event, start trying to meditate and I again, like I hate to come back to that but we do know from neuroscience studies that you can have gray matter thickening with meditation and potential neurogenesis, which is also kind of related to this exercise concept and promoting BDNF and other molecules, but there's there are certain things like that, that you can do to kind of rebuild and promote healthy connections and potentially even new growth and new wiring in the brain. So, things that are, you know, certainly promoting that parasympathetic state that I mentioned before are all going. As far as the people who asked it over folding underwear. I don't have much what that's about, I think, you know, again, like with regard to stress response, a lot of people don't know how they're going to respond to something until they're in it. They think that they're super tough or super, super weak, and then the shit hits the fan and then all of a sudden, they were the total opposite of what they thought, and that's pretty common. I think a lot of people just don't have an idea, especially if they don't have any stress, inoculation or training around it. It's kind of like a crapshoot as to how you're going to be but that's, I think, of course, where, as you guys know Like this is this distress training is super important, but there will still be people who go through that and have inexplicable outcomes and you know, difficulty in dealing with their experiences.
Peaches 36:13
It's funny when you're when you're going through the pipeline and stuff and you're, whether you're at the pool or you're doing some kind of task at some times, depending on what the task is, you're sitting there going, like, why are we doing this? This is dumb. I, you know, this suck, too. But what they don't see is what you're talking about is that stress inoculation so that when you are put into a bad situation, you can do exactly what we've talked about the past, which is remain calm, have an even keel. Give yourself the chance to make a good decision, even if it's not 100% solution and 80% solution is better than making no decision at all.
Brian 36:53
Yeah, just the last thing because I wanted to cover, I brought it up in the beginning. We were kind of talking about it, but just out of those people. That you see have TBI/PTSD? How what percentage would you say are actually able to be functional? Or, you know, if they're cooperative with the treatment regimen that they're given? All right, would it be functional just for those people because I get questions about, you know, a parent asking what is the actual prevalence of PTSD? And is my son or daughter going to, you know, end up not being a functional member of society anymore? So just to cover that?
Dr. Pate 37:26
Yeah, um, so PTSD is interesting in that it's talked about quite a bit because it is so a it affects people's lives so greatly for people who experience a traumatic event, which it's not, it's not just a difficult experience. It's actual like really traumatic, where you think that you are going to die, you know that that likelihood is there or you witness somebody who's traumatized. The people who experienced that and go on to develop a maladaptive stress response, which can to manifest as PTSD or like sub threshold PTSD or complex PTSD, all these different diagnoses, it's it can be that estimates in the literature are around 20%. And that's kind of on the high range. Some people suspect that it's lower than that, at any given point. It's also estimated that for men and women both that the prevalence of PTSD, that people experienced that and have been diagnosed is under 10% for both genders, although women are typically more likely to develop PTSD than men are. So, it sounds really low. But again, these are people who have actually been diagnosed and what I'll say about PTSD is that there are so many symptoms of it. It's really complicated that when people go in to see a doctor or mental health professional, if they're not really, really well trained, they'll miss the diagnosis and just say, this person is, you know, irritable this person Has insomnia, this person is just depressed, whatever it might be, and they're missing that diagnosis. So, I don't want to say that the numbers are greatly, you know, elevated above what I just said. But I'd imagine that there are more people who could meet that criteria. And maybe if they don't, they're certainly, you know, encompassing quite a few of those symptoms. For some people who develop PTSD, I think that they there's like this third rule, like the thirds, for people who develop it, a third will spontaneously recover, which means they don't meet the diagnosis, it doesn't mean that they're okay. It just means that they don't meet the diagnosis anymore. A third of people will maintain it, and it'll resolve with effective treatment, and then a third of people, it won't resolve. So, unless they and they'll have severe symptoms unless they seek effective treatment. So, I think that the key underlying all of this is that like, you have to Read it. And there, there's, again, like you have to apply all these tools. And when you talk about PTSD, people need to understand that it's not a disease and you can overcome it. It's not I was talking about this with a friend the other day, it's not a disease like diabetes is where you can manage it, but you PTSD overcome, and you just need to rewire your stress response, which has gone haywire because a really traumatic event. And that's possible, but you may need to take, you may need to do psychotherapy, with exercise and yoga, you may need to do multiple things. And the idea is to utilize all these tools to remove the highly active stress response system from these different memories that you have. And that's absolutely possible. We know that for a fact. So, it can take time. If something isn't working for someone and you know, parents are concerned it, try multiple things and don't give up because there are things that will work it It's just a matter of figuring out what is right for that one person. So that's the best I have without knowing, you know, these individual people. But I would say to have hope because these things absolutely can be overcome.
Brian 41:14
And I think that's really awesome to hear. Because a lot of people think, you know, based on what movies are, like Lieutenant Dan, or whoever that they see in movies, and they're like, this guy messed up for life, he's always just going to have nightmares. He's always just going to have you know this thing because that's who he is. And, you know, like, he made that analogy between diabetes and PTSD. It's really great to hear that, you know, things can be overcome.
Dr. Pate 41:40
more thing that I want to say about it is that like for anyone listening who either has been diagnosed or is concerned about somebody, or themselves. One of the things we absolutely do know from the literature is that PTSD involves trauma and that trauma is it greatly affects your physiology. And your body and your stress response. And so, the only way to overcome it and the most effective way to overcome it is through processing a lot of this, these emotional, emotionally charged memories through body work. So like there's this whole there's this whole theory and there's a lot of research around it that shows that kind of what happens to the body and like, like trauma is stored in the body and unless you work with it and allow that to, to play out, essentially, like you had a traumatic experience you were halted, it never actually came to completion. And there's a theory in this that's wrapped up in animal physiology like when you watch like a gazelle get attacked by a mountain lion and then escapes and you watch what happens, and you can record what's going on in its nervous system. Then the similar a similar process happens in humans and a lot of times we just aren't allowed to have that trauma resolved and so a lot of people who are trying to work with trauma and overcome PTSD and they haven't found success. Try taking a bodywork approach and finding a somatic based therapist. Those people really have a lot of tools for people who have some sort of resistant PTSD. So put that out there.
Peaches 43:17
Yeah, I don't I don't think that the pharmaceutical company is the answer or the end all be all obviously there are medications that people need. But I think you've got to be willing and able to take care of yourself and a lot of people that you don't know, you know, hey, I don't know, all I hear is, is yoga. And there's these people that are doing insane balance poses. It's like, Hey, you can do regular yoga without doing all that stuff and still get all the benefits. You just have to be able or willing to go rather.
Dr. Pate 43:47
Yeah, absolutely. And yoga. It's the balancing postures or postures in general. It's one part. There's meditation, there's breathwork there's self-study. There's, you know, all of these different parts of what Yoga is. And all we see because of social media is just like super awesome, bendy people doing cool shit that we'll never be able to do. And that's not at all what it's about.
Peaches 44:28
How much of this mental illness issues that we are seeing is related to TBIs, do you think and I don't need an exact number. But I you know, as somebody who has TBI who sees a neurologist and had multiple MRIs and I've got you know, I guess, probably not the right word hemorrhages maybe in the brain. Yeah, dark spots. But I feel fine. I'm not I'm not somebody who's broken. I don't have PTSD. So how, like, because we all know we, I'm pretty sure we all know somebody, probably the same person that they were in a very traumatic firefight for about three weeks, got blown up several times. And he is not the same person he was prior to that, and that is probably down to the TBI. So how much of that is related do you think?
TBI TO PTSD
Dr. Pate 45:31
So, traumatic brain injuries often cause symptoms that appear similar to somebody with PTSD and other mental health issues because for instance, like with somebody who's in the both acute and chronic stage have a traumatic brain injury, you might have sleep disturbances, you might have nightmares, you might be extremely irritable. You might be overly aggressive. If you might have avoidant behaviors, you know, you could be depressed your outlook on life has changed all of these different things can be part of a TBI outcome and symptoms from it. And that looks similar for some folks to what PTSD is, but it also just points to mental health related issues. So, if you have TBI and you develop depression, it's probably because of that TBI. I mean, there's no way to separate all of that out. We can't do that yet. But when you didn't have it before, and then you experience a brain injury and then you're a different person. You can have profound changes and to address the mental health components that are related to an actual injury of your brain like a mechanical injury rather than a psychological injury. It isn't that different of an approach to healing; you have to now for somebody who has like severe damage to their brain. They're Some things that can't be repaired necessarily, but it doesn't mean you can overcome whatever deficit that manifests that. So, if you have, I have friends who definitely fit the bill who have had lots of injuries to their heads and they have found in the same way that you would address a mental health issue. They have used those alternative approaches and addressed what they you know, what they've been working through and these mental health symptoms, I guess if they're TBI, it's difficult to separate it all out but you definitely have some tools there. I think for people listening to it. There are centers who focus on this so for active duty service members NICOE National Intrepid Center of Excellence, they do a lot with TBI and people who have severe deficits. They're from you know, mild to moderate TBI. And then out here in Colorado, we have the Marcus brain Institute and that's kind of more focused on the veteran side of things, but essentially rehabbing your brain, it is possible. Um, neuroplasticity is real. We know this. And, you know, people just need to have hope and put in the work. Sometimes the gains are small, but for somebody like your buddy, I mean, that is a severe injury, what it sounds like a severe injury, but also an extremely traumatic experience. So, there could be multiple things at play there. And with traumatic brain injuries, too, you can be more susceptible to the rewiring of your nervous system and your stress response in a in a maladaptive way its kind of prime's the brain in some ways. So again, throw, the whole kitchen sink at it.
Trent 48:46
Well, and then that kind of leads into like your company, Doc, like, what are you? What are you guys doing? I mean, its kind of own company. Can you take a second and brag about exactly what you guys are doing to combat all these times? But stuff for the veterans and for all those people that are may or may not be crazy out there, you can see the C word.
CORUNA MEDICAL
Dr. Pate 49:09
So, we're focused on right now our primary areas of interest just because of where the I mean, we everything we do is government funding. So, we have to kind of do what the military tells us the needs are. So right now, we're focusing, we're focusing on some products for ocular trauma, which is totally separate. I mean, so definitely nothing we've talked about today. But it's a really difficult problem on the battlefield, because there's, you know, shield them and ship them in there. Like there's no real good solution for anyone who sustained eye trauma and not anyone who's lost vision would tell you that they'd rather have a limb loss than eyesight. So, I mean, it's a severe problem and there aren't great options for it. So, we're working on a treatment for eye trauma in the field and that could be like chemical thermal mechanical injuries to the eye. We're doing the same kind of thing for burn trauma, which you know, resuscitation in the field and like a prolonged field care setting can be extremely difficult. So, we're trying to solve that issue. Another area that's near and dear to my heart is TBI. So, we're working with an organization that has some really interesting technology to promote targeted brain cooling in the field. And I know this is a very controversial topic among neuroscientists and clinicians. But we've seen some really incredible results thus far with this approach in granted, it's been in animals. But there have been people who have done clinical trials in humans as well. And so, this is something that absolutely can be done. Yeah, there's, there's a number of ways you can do it. You know, I think the easiest approach is nasal pharyngeal. So just tubes up the nose, that blow cold air on the nasal pharynx. And the blood that passes to the brain goes by that and can potentially selectively cool just the brain rather than, you know, the entire body. So, which has obvious problems, hypothermia as part of this really complex trauma issue and prolonged field care settings and in acute trauma care as well. Yeah, I mean, it's probably like a really uncomfortable brain freeze, but I'd assume people would be unconscious for it. So hopefully, it would not be that uncomfortable.
Aaron 52:04
I they're my patients are going to be a night guy.
Dr. Pate 52:08
So maybe that'll be out there for you guys to use. And, I don't know 10 years or so whatever it takes to get through the FDA and those giant hoops but, um, so that's, that's another area and then outside of my company and we're working on some other side projects too. We there's a center for combat research here at the University of Colorado medical school. So, there's lots of cool stuff we're working on. But in the volunteer space, that's where I work with all these organizations. We're focused on veteran mental health and just mental health in general. So that's the very little free time that I have, I try to just push it all in that direction, do whatever I can to. Destigmatize this, this whole mental health thing and also just make people aware of other options so they can help themselves because ultimately, like I can't heal anyone other than myself, and neither you guys can either we can reach out we can provide tools to people But people have to kind of own that process and take it into their own hands. But they need to know they need the information and they need to know what's out there for them. So, I'm just trying to spread that word.
Peaches 53:12
So, guys, you guys got any more questions related to TBI or mental health or anything like that?
Aaron 53:19
Not I don't specifically I learn a ton.
Dr. Pate 53:26
So, thanks for having me on. This is this is great.
Peaches 53:29
Really, we appreciate it. And you know, as somebody who deals with brain trauma, it is much appreciated to know that there are people in organizations like yours and many others that are focused on this and, and it's a real problem and we got to get through it, you know, and that's, it's almost to be expected after, what 19 years of fighting around the world, not just in Afghanistan, but you know, suicides are spiking PTSD is increased. And then you got people like me that just enjoy getting their bow rung with TBIs. So how can how can people find you on your company and then on your social media
Dr. Pate 54:16
They can find me I'm on LinkedIn, Kate Pate and the company Coruna Medical is also linked to my LinkedIn page and we have a website but it's bare bones we're you know, small company so that we don't put our money towards websites these days. And then other than that, just the standard channels of you know, Facebook and Instagram.
Peaches 54:43
All right, well, we'll make sure that we tag you appropriately whenever we launch this thing but for all the folks out there that are that are listening or watching us on YouTube. Mental health is nothing a scoff and you know, if you find yourself that in that boat that you're hurting, reach out to somebody, if you recognize that, that one of your friends or your buddies or even if they're not your friend is having a difficult time, help them out. From my experience. We are quick to kind of outcasts, somebody because it's like, oh, they've got a problem, and I can't I don't have the time to deal with it or something like that. And in reality, we should be bringing those people in even more, not, you know, sequestering them someplace else. So, everybody, thanks for joining us. If you enjoy the episode, please leave a review. Tell us how good or bad we did. And then hit us up on info@onesready.com for any questions you have or you can hit us on Instagram. And we appreciate you guys joining us. Let's go out there and earn each breath.
TLDR: LIFE IN THE SOF COMMUNITY IS GREAT. PREPARATION, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND GOOD LEADERSHIP/FOLLOWERSHIP ARE THE KEYS TO THE CASTLE. FINALLY WE AREN’T WORTHY HAVING TREY ON!
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