This podcast is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or establish a doctor-patient relationship. Information provided here should not replace consultation with a healthcare provider. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider with any questions about a medical condition or before making health decisions based on this content.

Dr. Tyler Hurst DC, DIBCN is a physician and owner of The Brain Health Clinics, dedicated to the treatment of neurological conditions. He was born and raised in Cambridge, Ohio. He became interested in chiropractic following a high school basketball injury and began pursuing an education in the field. After high school he attended Kent State University and obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Physiology. He graduated from Palmer Florida in March of 2018. During his last two years at Palmer he completed the necessary hours to sit for the IACN Diplomate examination. His passion for neurology and his dedication to the study of the discipline was sparked by his neurological training at Palmer and because of a stroke that his mother suffered when he was very young. He has been Board Certified in Neurology since May of 2018 and been in private practice in Nashville, TN since graduation. In 2022, he and colleague, Dr. Dylan Saulsbery, founded The Brain Health Clinics. This clinic is dedicated to the treatment of neurological conditions such as TBI, stroke rehabilitation, dizziness and balance conditions, developmental disorders and chronic pain.

John Shegerian: Do you have a suggestion for a rockstar Impact Podcast guest? Go to impactpodcast.com and just click “Be a Guest” to recommend someone today. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States, with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital, from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Hey, we’re here with Dr. Tyler Hurst today, and you’re going to listen to a really great and important show about brain health and neurological health, but keep this in mind: this is a show for information purposes only. Go see your own doctor to do anything, and to take on any practice or protocol that you’re hearing about today. Don’t do it on your own. Do it only under the care of your own physician. I ask you to do that. But this is going to be a great show, so listen here for some information you’ve never heard before. Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian. I’m so honored to have with us today Dr. Tyler Hurst. He’s the physician, owner, and founder of the Brain Health Clinics. Welcome, Tyler, to the Impact Podcast.

Dr. Tyler Hurst: John, thanks so much for having me on. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity.

John: Hey, Doc, before we get talking about all the important and impactful work you’re doing with your patients at the Brain Health Clinics, can you share a little bit about your background? Where’d you grow up, and how’d you get on this fascinating journey that you’re on, an important journey that you’re on?

Dr. Tyler: I’m from Ohio originally, born and raised in southeast or central Ohio. I didn’t know much about chiropractic until a basketball injury in high school. Luckily, a chiropractor was just down the road, and my grandmother and my mother were like, “Let’s take another look at what’s going on with your neck.” A couple of adjustments and a couple of treatments from that doc in Ohio, and it changed my perspective on health in general. I make a joke that I think adjusting the spine, I say it a little differently to the clients, but I think adjusting the spine is the coolest job in the world. I’m not that good at baseball, although I love it, so I couldn’t be Kenny Lofton. I’m not good with a guitar, so I couldn’t be Jimi Hendrix. And I’m not that great at basketball, so I couldn’t be LeBron James. So the next best thing: chiropractor. So I fell in love with chiropractic because, like a lot of other chiros, I just had an injury when I was young and a chiropractor helped me.

John: [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: We have a specialty degree, the doctors that work for me and myself, in neurology. So we hold a two-year postgraduate degree in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions. So a lot of folks don’t know that chiropractors specialize nowadays. We don’t just crack backs. We treat complex brain conditions at our clinic, which is why it’s called the Brain Health Clinics. So that venture started. I got to Palmer, Florida, which is the chiropractic school that I went to. Every chiropractor that goes through training nowadays gets about a year of neuroanatomy and physiology in their standard training. But the doc that was instructing us at Palmer, Florida, at the time, a guy named Donald Dishman, was on the forefront of chiropractic neurology, the specialty in chiropractic. So he’s in the front of the class, kind of sprinkling in some of those clinical gems into the standard course load: eye movements for movement disorders like Parkinson’s, nutritional aspects for brain conditions, all kinds of alternative medicine ideas for the brain. It’s fascinating to every student that goes through, especially with Don’s delivery. He’s just a cool guy. So everyone kind of gravitates toward it. But for me, when I was a young kid, three, four years old, my mother had a stroke. So for my entire life, my mom had weird neurological symptoms that, I’ll be frank, I made fun of and kind of joked about and things like that. She would wear sunglasses in the house. Her hand felt funky. She had all kinds of mental health complications because of it: anxiety, paranoia, depression. So that was just normal stuff growing up. One day after class, I talked with Dr. Dishman. I’m like, “Hey, is there a doctor in Ohio that may be able to help my mom with some of these neurological conditions that she’s having? This is 20 years post-stroke.” He’s like, “I don’t know anybody up there, but we can look.” So we start fishing around on our practitioner portal, and we find a guy named Dr. Rush Schroeder. Surely, or conveniently enough, he’s only about 30 minutes away from where my mom lives. So we’re talking about a lady who for 20 years was on several medications, I won’t say locked to the bed, that’s not fair to say to her. She’d probably be mad at me for saying that, but her life was not okay. And it hit a breaking point with some stress at work and different things, and she just went into a deep dive in terms of mental health. And so, at this time, it’s kind of a perfect storm. I’m in this schooling for the topic, and then we find a doc that’s really close. So we’re like, “All right, let’s get Mom over there.” Within six months, John, not only were some of her neurological symptoms that she had for 20 years; eye fatigue, photophobia or light sensitivity, regular headaches, sensory disturbances in her arm, her hand, and her face, not only did those go away, but she also was able to get off several medications. She was able to go out in public again, feel comfortable driving a car, and work without terrible, crippling anxiety. So this discipline gave my mom her life back. At this point, that was 10 years ago. If my mother walked in this room, you wouldn’t know that she had a stroke 30 years ago. So once that happened, or I watched that progression, I jumped into the program immediately. It used to be a two-year postgraduate degree where you had to have a doctorate degree to actually obtain the extra initials behind your name. For whatever reason, God, universal, whatever it may be, they opened up those hours so that you could do them during your doctorate program. So for about 22 months, and there were days off there, it wasn’t constant, but I went to school seven days a week, a lot of weeks to get the neurology degree on top of the doctorate in chiropractic. When I came out of school back in early 2018, I had both of those degrees basically in hand. I just had to pass a bunch of fancy tests. And once I did that, I moved to Nashville. So my wife, who is also a chiropractor, we met in chiropractic school, was raised in Florida. I was raised in Ohio. And one night, we realized we were going to spend our lives together. “Where are we going to live?” We landed on Nashville, Tennessee, not because we are musically inclined, not because we knew a soul, we didn’t have jobs, nor did we have money, but we took a stab at it. And so we moved here, and I immediately started practicing on neuropatients in a small clinic in the south part of the town. From there, we’ve expanded it to a much larger clinic, a staff of six guys, thousands of patients at this point, but really, the thing that keeps me. I have a brain tattooed on my arm as a joke that I make. I do two things in my life at this point: I hang out with my babies, because I have three kids and my wife, and I talk to people about their brain. I don’t play golf anymore. I watch a little bit of sports here and there, but all I’m doing is reading books and thinking about how I can help my patients and be the best dad and husband that I can be. So that’s the story.

John: I love it. When did you start the first clinic? Just for a little bit of context, when did you start the first clinic in Nashville?

Dr. Tyler: So I integrated with a group of chiros that had various specialties of their own, but none were disciplined in neurology. So I was basically contracting, or renting, from them out of a small room in the back of their clinic. They let me take over quite a bit of it, depending on the day. So I was there from ’18 until ’22. And then, in ’22, I moved into my new location, which is standalone. I’m the sole owner of it. Since then, we’ve scaled it up three different times as well, staying in the same building, but just a larger suite each time.

John: Right. Was your wife ever practicing with you, or how’d that work?

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. So her first year out, she did practice for a short period of time. She actually had more of a line on nutrition and working with pediatrics and pregnant patients, women’s health type stuff. So she did that for a while. And then we got married, and our daughter came along, she actually stopped working at that time and now stays home full-time with all three kids.

John: Which is a full-time job, plus, plus, plus.

Dr. Tyler: She’s doing a little homeschooling as of this week as well. So she’s wearing many hats. I may retrain people’s brains, but I can’t do half of what she does. So she’s the real worker.

John: When did you decide to rebrand what you do in Nashville to the Brain Health Clinics?

Dr. Tyler: That’s a fun story. I have a few colleagues who are around the same graduation time and age, and some of the guys that lead our board are a little bit older. They’re moving on from the education piece of it, and definitely the practice piece of this discipline. So, through discussion with two of my colleagues, what we’ve come up with is: there are several chiropractic board-certified chiropractic neurologists in the world, but in the United States, and they all kind of stick to, not all of them, but most of them stick to, a method or a practice style that is what they call the “intensive model.” Basically, what that means is they bring the client in from all over the world, and they change almost everything in their neurological system within a week or two. The goal of the treatment is, the person comes in for an extensive day of testing, and then they find all of the shortcomings in the neurocircuitry, and they retrain them through things like eye movements, balance exercises, nutrition, hyperbaric oxygen, IVs, all of the alternative disciplines, but they do what’s called neurorehabilitation, which is basically reprogramming the entire nervous system. Now, the model that other doctors utilize is kind of the “we’re going to hammer this thing out for a week, maybe two weeks, and get as much change as we possibly can. And then follow-up from there is every six months, every year,” whatever it may be. Sometimes, just because of their schedule, and because they do brilliant work, they don’t have a lot of time for that follow-up, and that’s understandable. I respect all of them because they have paved the way. I think their clinics are fantastic. I could name them if we need to, but we don’t need to. So we’re sitting around at one of our annual conferences, and we’re like, “You know, it would be cool if we could do it at a more high pace, where we don’t just see, let’s say, four clients for two weeks. Well, what if we saw a hundred clients in a week?” And so the old chiropractic model is: how many patients can you see in one week? That’s how these clinics make money, but it’s more or less: how many people can we get better? So we took the old high-volume model of chiropractic and the neurorehabilitation model of chiropractic neurology and meshed the two. And so our idea is, with the right training, with the right pieces in each clinic that we are planning to develop, we can see more patients week in and week out. So right now, my staff and I see roughly between 15 to 25 patients every single day that we’re in the office. Whereas, in comparison to the other model, they may only see one patient or three. And now, a lot of times when I have conversations with doctors from the other side of that model, none of it’s a disagreement, it’s just a different style. It is: well, how long does it take to get the patient better? We’re trying to achieve 75% success in two weeks. But for my staff and I, we do drag it out a little longer. It’s going to take us maybe three months, but the difference is you’re going to see us every week or twice a week, and have full access to us and to answer your questions week in and week out for the next month, two months, three months, six months, whatever it may be. That turns into sometimes, where someone’s cousin from Minnesota heard that they had success. So they come down, and they spend two weeks, or they spend a month here, and then they go back to Minnesota. So we’ve done that too. But the model that we’re shooting for is: how many practitioners can we put into clinics that can use the method of reprogramming the entire nervous system, work through the nutritional aspect, and demands of the whole nervous system. And then also couple that with at-home programs, basically for them to keep the results. So, in my experience, not that we do it better; it’s just a different approach. And so, going across the board and asking the other chiro-neuros in the world, basically, because no one knows what chiropractic neurology is unless you listen to someone like me talk about it.  Because that’s the first thing people say: “I don’t know what a chiropractic neurologist is.” I go, “Yeah, me either. Let me try to explain it.” But the gist is, we want to be the leader of how many people can we influence and help at one time, instead of these, because what happens with the larger clinics that do just the two-week intensive is they’re capped. So we don’t want to be capped. We want to help every man, woman, and child that’s willing to, or is in need of, this therapy. So we’re trying to stand alone in the reach-as-many-people-as-we-possibly-can method.

John: Got it. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Dr. Tyler Hurst with us today. He’s the founder, physician, and owner of the Brain Health Clinics. To find Tyler and his colleagues and all the great work they do, please go to www.thebrainhealthclinics.com. So, define chiropractic neurology. Define what that is, classically and practically speaking. Walk us through. I come in to see you today, and I had a bad concussion. I’m having all these symptoms. Or, as you talked about, your mom, someone like your mom comes to see you who has had 20 years of symptoms from a stroke, a catastrophic event. What’s the journey you put us on, and explain the different silos and modalities that all converge and work together?

Dr. Tyler: Has[?] two answers: what is chiropractic neurology?

John: Yeah, [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: So chiropractic, I think most listeners should know a little bit about it, but it’s based in the evaluation and treatment of spinal conditions through movement of the spine or joints. All joints; most people don’t just lock into the spine. They’ll pop your finger and different things. But the neurology piece comes in because, basically, chiropractors are looking for the originators of these non-drug, non-surgical interventions to neurological conditions. What that means is, if you go to the medical neurologist, and this is not a knock on them, I always jokingly say, “We’re close to Vanderbilt, right? The fountainhead of all medicine, really.  And they do great work, of course. I always jokingly say, “If you have a brain tumor, please do not come to the Brain Health Clinics. Go to Vanderbilt and have them cut it out. At the end of that treatment, and when they release you for PT, please come over here and let us help you rewire that system.” And so we start with a three- to four-hour in-depth evaluation of every single person, no matter what their complaint is, whether it’s concussion or, fourth, I really say is concussion, post-stroke, dizziness and balance conditions, developmental disorders in kiddos, movement disorders. Now we’re also getting into the realm of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. So what we do is, I think of it like an electrician. I’m a simple guy from Ohio, so I like to use simple analogies. But what we do as chiropractic neurologists, in comparison to, let’s say, a medical neurologist, the medical neurologist is looking for vast pathology. They’re going to put you in the MRI machine, and they’re going to look for a big tumor. They’re going to look for some type of ailment, and then they’re going to try to medicate the nervous system or adapt it through PT or surgery, or some other measure like that. A lot of times, it is going to be pharmaceuticals, and I think we all know that. They’re looking for a vast change, meaning, if I have a brain tumor on the right-hand side of my brain, what’s happening on the left side of my body? Because the right side of the brain, 85% of the time, controls the left side of your body and vice versa. So they’re looking for, what do we need to do about that brain tumor? Let’s get it out of there, send them home, and give them the best quality of life possible. For me, quality of life means a lot more than just, can they pick up a spoon? I’m saying, “Can they walk down the block and not feel dizzy? Can they pick up their grandkid and run around with them for an hour, or are they going to be tanked? So the difference between us is we’re not looking at gross pathology, per se. Now, we do find them. We’ve found brain tumors in our clinic just with our bedside exams, which is unfortunate, but we have. We’re looking for these little subtleties. Does your left pupil and your right pupil do the exact same thing? Does your eye movement look the same when you look out to your left as it does to your right? Can you sense your balance if you are standing with your eyes open or with your eyes closed? Does a pinwheel feel the same over your right eyebrow as it does over your left eyebrow? And so, instead, we use some of those classic neuro tests, I would say, but we’re also really well-versed in the neuro-ophthalmology principles. So most medical neurologists are going to throw their finger or pen up in front of you and say, “Follow my pen,” and they go, “Can you see it? Is there any doubling?” And you go, “Yeah, I can see it. No doubling.” They go, “You’re fine.” And we’re looking at, no, when you move from just in front of your nose to just in front of your right ear, there’s like three or four little saccadic intrusions, meaning your eyes do a little bit of a shake. We want to stabilize that shake because that means that the left side or the right side of your brain isn’t doing something. And so we’ll utilize the eye movement and what your body does as you move your eyes, because the eyes are the windows to the central nervous system. They’re the only brain tissue that we can actually see on the outside of you. The way that they sit, the way that they move, the way that they lock onto a target says a lot about what’s going on on the inside. A lot of doctors overlook that. So we start there, and instead of giving them some type of global balance exercise, which everybody on the planet would recognize, “Stand on your right foot and brush your teeth. John, let’s see if you can do that.” That’s a little too diverse. We try to hone it in a little bit. What happens when you try to do that is you fall all over the place. Well, that starts with your eyes can’t focus on the toothbrush in the mirror. So we start with, what is the basic function that this nervous system has? And how do we increase the basic reflexes and functions first? And so we’ll stair-step. I always jokingly say, because I like simple analogies, it’s a three-legged stool; your eyes, your ears, and the muscles of your spine are best friends. If those best friends don’t talk, or one doesn’t talk to the other, there’s drama. So a lot of times, if your eyes and your ears and these muscles don’t integrate together, you can’t sense your body in space. And when your body can’t sense itself in space, all kinds of weird autonomic things happen: heart rate abnormalities, stress mechanisms, anxiety, dizziness, headaches. So we try to look at it from a, functional is the wrong word. Everyone likes to use that, functional medicine, functional neurology, those types of things. But we’re looking at the subtleties in the function and trying to rehab them through various means. That could be an eye movement, that could be a balance exercise, that could be you need to take more selenium. So we’ll also couple that with blood lab analysis, sometimes even stool analysis, hair mineral analysis, and then any form of workup that they’ve had from any other practitioner. We say, “Bring it in, let’s look through all of it together.” So that could be everything from viruses that they fought off for a long time, to head injuries that they had when they were 10, but they didn’t think it was anything. So we’ll go over the whole health history. The first hour of that three hours is us just talking about, “Well, did you stub your toe when you were six? That could mean this.” And so we work it all the way backwards, even if you’re 99, we still try to go back in time. But putting all of that together, we find that it’s more of that whole-body or whole-patient approach. And then, why we take such a long time in that initial exam, we do a lot of what I call exercise prescription at the tail end of it. So we’re looking at, if I move your eyes out to the left 36 times, can you actually tolerate that? We’ll do a stress test on the patient during the visit. A lot of times, we’ll find most people can’t do that 12 times. But if you look at the literature, it says that we rapidly move our eyes around, let’s say, our devices or just reading emails, somewhere around 50 to 100,000 times every single day. So if you can’t do 12 of these movements, how can you do 100,000 every single day? So you’re working from a deficit most days in the neuro world if you can’t lock your eyes onto your email. And so we’ll take lifestyle into account. Are you an accountant, or do you work in the fields? We’re looking at all of that, and we’re tailoring each treatment to that person. We don’t chase symptoms, per se, but we’ll ask people, “What does it feel like to your eyes and to your balance system, or even the tremor that you have in your right hand when you walk in the grocery store? What does it feel like when you’re standing on your porch? What does it feel like when you’re in the shower?” So we’re trying to figure out also what their day-to-day does to their nervous system, so that we can help them with lifestyle adjustments as well. And then the chiropractic piece of that comes into it, because when you adjust the spine or the cranial alignment, in terms of the sutures or your jaw, or let’s even say, go as far as your thumb or your big toe, those wires are all connected to the master circuit breaker, which is your brain. So we’ll utilize certain adjustments. They don’t have to be big popping, cracking adjustments. A lot of times, for the first five to 10 visits with people, we never crack a single bone. We just manually move it with our hands. So we do a lot of hands-on treatment, which is under the classification of chiropractic. We do move joints. We do stretch muscles. We do work on tendons. We have devices like cold laser therapy, cupping, Graston, manual therapy. I have two massage therapists that work for me. We do a lot of lymphatic massage techniques for the brain, the abdomen. We do a lot of hands-on things as well, which fits into that chiropractic paradigm. So it’s a neurology retraining, but we use chiropractic as a way to train the neurology as well.

John: Understood. So, for people who want to come to you, what are the kinds of conditions that people seek you out for? Is everything post-stroke, just dizziness, imbalanced conditions, the things that they’re born with, chronic pain? Is there such a thing as your prototypical patient, or really you are trying to build a bigger tent and welcome all in that think they have some sort of deficiency?

Dr. Tyler: I love that question now, because I’ve changed it like 20 times over the last 10 years. I have extra training as well, in concussion, vestibular, so balance conditions, developmental disorders. So that was the thing that I used to always sell, if you would. But now I find the longer you’re here, the larger Nashville, if the listeners don’t know, Nashville has grown exponentially, and not just in 10 years, but the last 20 is a crazy chart to look at. So a lot of people live here, and a lot of people move here, and post-2020 as well. More people are looking towards, “Man, I don’t want to take that certain medication for that nerve thing, or I’m feeling depressed, but I don’t think I want to take this for that.” We’re at a sweet spot of people looking for alternative means more. And so, what is the normal condition coming in is so diverse now. So I’ve coined it as we’re willing to help any patient with any neurological condition. However, if you want to work in what I call our human performance, we have patients that come in, we have a lot of student athletes. I’ve had as crazy of things as, “I want my fastball to be four miles an hour faster. I want my punt to go five yards longer.” Or, “I want my eye contact with my foot to make my punt land on the five-yard line, not the 10.” And so we’ve worked that mechanism as well, which is eye training and reaction-time stuff. It’s so fun to do, because they really don’t hurt anywhere. We love that. My staff and I were athletes, and so we like working with that population.

John: They’re coming in at a certain performance level, and they just want to get better at their performance.

Dr. Tyler: Absolutely. We love that. We probably love it too much, but we like working with [crosstalk].

John: I get it, and that’s the fun in life. But then you have the great and important story that you shared at the top of the show about someone like your mom, who’s probably given up, who’s probably been horribly impacted for 20 years. At some point, they lose hope, they wear out, another crisis happens that just compounds the first horrible episode, and it just spirals downward. Those people who are on their last drop of hope come to you as well, I take it.

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. Unfortunately, it is usually the last-resort kind of thing, and then it hopefully turns into something amazing for them. We do have a lot of significantly injured population, that’s TBI, so concussion, post-stroke, a lot of dizziness, a lot of spinal injury, spinal trauma, nerve entrapment, nerve ablation, like where they’ve actually physically done it from a motor vehicle accident or something of that nature. Cognitive impairment has been a big one recently, just with the aging population, we’re seeing a lot of memory lapse and stuff of that nature. So we’ve been working a lot in that realm with memory, recall, frontal lobe and executive functions, and then balance is a big one, because a lot of people, young or old, don’t know that they have a balance issue. And then, of course, chronic pain fits into that because that is a neurological system problem. So we have a whole host of things that come in. The joke that I like to tell, because I’m silly with the patients, I have fun at my job all the time, and I like to make light of bad situations to make them feel better, but to also motivate. So we do a little life coaching in here too, like, “Mrs. Jones, I know it’s really hard to do your eye movements at home, but look at what it did.” So we re-motivate constantly. And then, outside of the cognitive impairment, a newer thing that we’re seeing are these dysautonomia patients. So most of the lay people or listeners would know it as POTS syndrome, or long COVID, or tachycardia, arrhythmia. It’s coined as dysautonomia because the autonomic nervous system controls a lot of the things that we don’t think about, our heart rate. [crosstalk].

John: Break that down. What does it mean [inaudible]? What’s the top three to five symptoms for dysautonomia?

Dr. Tyler: Disorientation, both visual and auditory, overstimulation, rapid heart rate, rapid respiratory rate, anxiety, weird body temperature changes; hot, cold, sweaty, clammy, gut/GI issues. So, a lot of times I’m constipated, I go quickly, I’m not going at all, I’m going too much. So it’s all those things that you really don’t think about.

John: How do you unravel that? Where do you start on that journey?

Dr. Tyler: A lot of times, because it’s something infectious, or it can be traumatic, people dismiss a head injury. What I mean by that is all of us, every single human that’s ever lived, has grazed their head on getting in the car or on the bottom of the cabinet or something like that, and just went, “Huh, hit my head kind of hard,” and they just move on. Well, those add up. We see a lot of undiagnosed head injury, and that’s a controversial conversation in medicine because what is a concussion and what is it not? There’s a bunch of different lines on that right now. But if it’s co-infection-wise, meaning someone had a viral infection that attacked their ear, or someone had a viral infection that attacked their gut, or someone had a viral infection that literally attacked their brain, we’re going to work it from a blood lab and hair mineral analysis evaluation, look at the pieces that the actual infection has taken from them. Do they have a white blood cell count that’s off the charts? Are there red blood cells in a weird formation? Do they have infectious debris in the liver? So we’re co-managing that sometimes with alternative medicine doctors here in Nashville and around the country, or we’re actually helping them with nutritional aspects, meaning changing an elimination diet or adding supplementation to their life. And then trying to start them at a baseline rehabilitation program, meaning that person probably doesn’t do the whole, what we call the brain gym approach, where they’re doing all kinds of neuro-integration exercises. They’re probably just trying to keep their eyes focused for an extended period of time every single day until they can expand that threshold a little bit. A lot of times too, John, it’s working on them physically, because it’s an outside-the-box concept, but a lot of times these toxins or these infections can find little crevices in the body, a.k.a. around the heart or pericardium, in the lung, in the brain. So, physically working that tissue in a lymphatic manner, or from a chiropractic standpoint, or honestly just using some trigger point release-type techniques, cold laser to move the tissue that is stagnant. Most people don’t get up out of their chair if they’re not feeling good. So when those things get stuck, they get stuck, and they stick down deep. So we do, a lot of times, work on those patients physically first for an extended period of time until they can tolerate reprogramming the brain. It’s a combination of nutritional changes and also physically working out the toxins that have anchored into the system. But if it’s the head injury aspect, we work it the other way around where it’s more brain training and doing supplemental things. It may be oxygen, it may be IV therapy, it may be taking more glutathione. There’s a whole list of supplementation based on what their labs say that we could utilize, but it’s some soup or recipe of all those things I just listed.

John: I want to ask you about different modalities. You and I know, I think the world is evolving, in the world of medicine at least, with the rise of AI moving now faster than ever before. Let’s talk a little bit about some models. Let’s start with a very basic one: hyperbaric oxygen. Now, I’m old enough to tell you a crazy story that back in the day, I want to say 45 years ago, 50 years ago, there used to be pictures of Michael Jackson in a hyperbaric tank on the cover of what was then the tabloid magazines and stuff like that. The world was up in arms and thought this was crazy stuff. Hyperbaric oxygen has been around quite a while. As I shared with you off the air, I had a bad concussion 14 or 15 years ago, and I went to go see Dr. Daniel Amen’s office, and one of his doctors in his office saw me and prescribed 90 days of straight hyperbaric oxygen for me, two hours a day. It seemed to really work and seemed to really help me a lot. Concurrently, back around 2016 or 2017, since I grew up in New York, I was a fan of Howard Stern, and I was listening to an interview Howard Stern was doing with the legendary quarterback Joe Namath. Joe Namath said he was a client and a patient of Dr. Daniel Amen, and he was starting to see a neurodegenerative decline because of all the concussions he had during his football career. Dr. Amen put him into a medical-grade hyperbaric tank for, I believe, 90 days. He told Howard Stern on his show that he was headed towards dementia and maybe early Alzheimer’s. And after he finished this protocol, his brain, from the scans that they took post-treatment, was the brain of someone in their thirties or something of that such[?]. And then Howard asked the obvious question, “Well, why doesn’t every football team and every stadium have a couple of these tanks?”

Now, doc, I’m telling you nothing that you don’t know, but let’s go into the political and also the practical applications of hyperbaric oxygen. And then also some of the politics between some of these protocols that are offering a lot of hope and help to people who are in need. Share some of your thoughts with regard to where we are today with regards to hyperbaric oxygen and the ability for it to help be part of the solution when people want to get on the right path to good brain health, just general health and wellness.

Dr. Tyler: That’s a fantastic question. The political piece of that really gets at me, which is why I kind of laughed [inaudible].

John: [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: I think a lot of medicine, or at least from the last 50 years, has relied on basically the research that supports X, Y, Z. Up until about 15 years ago, the research wasn’t publicly, I wouldn’t say available, because it was, but the public wasn’t directed to that. For 25 years, I’ve spoken with a recent DOD. Basically, the Department of Defense has worked with HBOT for a long time for vets who have concussive blasts and different things. They have some compelling research on hyperbaric oxygen therapy for the treatment of everything from PTSD to concussion, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome. I don’t even know how many thousands of papers are on this topic. The political piece of that is, I’m not sure why we’re not being directed to it. I could take some guesses, but I probably shouldn’t. I think hyperbaric oxygen is fantastic for brain conditions. I have one little disclaimer or side note. I don’t know that it’s awesome for every single head injury. That is because the brain loves three things that we know of: oxygen, so circulation; stimulation, meaning I read a book that is engaging, I go to the park, and I enjoy it, that type of thing; and then proper fueling. So glucose. It likes sugar, but not a Krispy Kreme donut. It likes kale salads and salmon. The right fueling, the right blood flow and oxygen, and the right stimulation make for a healthy brain. When you have some patients who have traumatic injury, let’s use Mr. Namath, obviously a legend who took a lot of shots. There’s a circulatory breakdown that occurs in some patients, meaning blood vessels actually break in the head, in the neck, et cetera. When we utilize something like hyperbaric oxygen for some, what happens is those blood pathways, those arterial cells, and those capillaries grow back at a more expedited rate. The patient recovers faster, which is also why I believe Dr. Amen likes to utilize several months in a row. They don’t just stop at 10 visits; they go all the way up to 90, which I think is probably the way to do it. The gist of what I was getting at is not every patient can tolerate that expedited rate. You will have some patients that, I won’t say have an adverse reaction to it, but they won’t heal at the same capacity as you or Mr. Namath. You have to be careful with that, in my experience, because I’ve had concussion patients that I send over to the HBOT clinic we have here in Nashville. I don’t own a device myself, but I send people to it all the time, and I have colleagues who use them every day in clinic. Some patients do fantastic, and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, that was life-changing.” Then you’ll have those others who don’t. But if you tailor it with other therapies and maybe some nutrition, it gets there. Standalone, it’s great. I would say 75% of the time, but there is that 25% of the time it is not.

John: That’s when you do integrated medicine with them, and you bring in other things as well.

Dr. Tyler: Exactly, John.

John: Go on, I’m finished. You’re finished, and I want to ask another follow-up question on this.

Dr. Tyler: I believe that every military outfit across the world should have their hands on some HBOT therapy. I believe every NFL team, every college football team, every girls’ soccer team, every basketball team should have the availability for HBOT. The fact that it still costs people money out of their pocket and cannot be approved for insurance and different things blows my mind and actually makes me a little bit upset. I do think that with the compelling research that they’ve compiled on vets specifically and in the NFL, we’re going to see that change. I don’t know how long that will take, but I would almost bet in the next decade or so, we’re seeing everybody in those chambers.

John: I agree with you. When you go on the NIH website and database, it says pretty clearly that the evidence in the papers shows HBOT is really great for, if not the top protocol for, post-stroke victims. Has that pretty much been your practice as well?

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. Again, it fits in the same thing I was saying about [crosstalk] can they handle it?

John: [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: Yeah, I believe it’s great for them too, because that’s a circulation issue. So, anything that stimulates that circulation piece, I’m all about it.

John: I was recently traveling on a business trip in London, and there was a regenerative medicine doctor there that shared with me he had just gotten in a spa he was running, actually in the hotel that I was staying in. He had just gotten in a new protocol, and it was by a company, well, I can remember it because I made a joke about it, a company called Neuronic. It was a German company, and it was a helmet that goes around your head. You can set it for either sleep, anti-anxiety, or different types of protocols for six minutes. Is all this new technology that’s coming out, and the rise of AI, helping your practice and helping your cause, or is it confusing the marketplace as well? Or is it a little bit of both?

Dr. Tyler: Great question. Again, I think it’s a little bit of both. I was just having a conversation with someone earlier about peptides for their specific problem, and peptides are getting a highlight right now. So it’s kind of a similar question.

John: BPC-157, TB-500 [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: Is that going to fix my neuropathy in my feet? It could. I don’t 100% know, but it’s worth a shot. If you don’t see the change in a certain amount of time, then you need to make a difference. But when it comes to the fancy gadgets, and I don’t know that product that you’re [crosstalk].

John: [inaudible] I’m just using that as an example.

Dr. Tyler: Yeah, I think that’s part of our practice and the discussion that my doctors and I have together every single day. I always jokingly say I could do this job with my hands and a penlight if I had nothing else. If I were on the side of the street and someone needed some neurological retraining [crosstalk], I could help them with my hands, my brain, and a penlight.

John: You can [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: So I think simple is sometimes better, but I think if you have the means and you can get something like Violite or these infrared saunas in your home, does it speed up the process for a lot of people? Absolutely. And so I’m all about toys. I think having toys is cool. I have really fancy gadgets myself; lasers and different stimulators for nerves and things like that. So I love toys, for sure, for this problem. The problem is how it could be marketed as, “this is going to cure your grandmother’s dementia”. I don’t always see that being the case. Again, I’m revisiting the same point, but I think it’s an integrative thing. One thing doesn’t fix everything. It’s HBOT, it’s eye movements, it’s taking more B vitamins of the methylated form. So there’s a collection of things that everybody could do. I just think it’s important to tailor it specifically to you. A lot of times those products are referred from friend to friend, and they go, “Well, it helped my friend Susie.: Then you get it, and you go, “Man, it didn’t help me like it helped Susie,” and you feel frustrated by that. The price tags on those things are pretty high, usually, and people also feel some buyer’s remorse and stuff.

John: PMEF. You [inaudible] against, or don’t have a lot of experience with PMEF and PMEF technology?

Dr. Tyler: Yeah, I’m a fan. I think the dosages are all over the place yet. They have full-body mats that you can lie on and different things that kind of have a standardized time, meaning they’ll go for 15, 30, and 60 minutes, maybe. Sometimes it’s all about healing rates, like I was talking about with the HBOT. It’s the same situation. Your heart may be able to handle 15 minutes on that thing, but maybe your liver can’t. And so, if you stimulate too much healing, even too much of a good thing is not always a good thing, I think you can overdo them. But in terms of healing from something like a musculoskeletal issue, a brain injury, or some type of visceral abnormality like a pancreas issue or intestinal issue, it can be fantastic. I primarily use it or refer for it. We don’t have one ourselves. For spinal injuries, especially the ones that you lie supine on, like they are on a larger mat that can actually hit the whole spine. I love it for disc issues. I love it for ligamentous issues in the spine. Those are usually tolerated pretty well and can be set toward that tissue, those types of things. Famously, they used, well, they still do, use it in the horse racing world. It’s a big thing on horses to get them ready for the big race and stuff. I think that serves itself, because those horses are beating themselves up, and it regenerates tissue.

John: I grew up in the horse race world. I’m 63, and I was using this when I was a teenager on racehorses. It was from Germany back then, the best technology. And it worked, because horses don’t lie. They’re going to go fast or they’re not.

Dr. Tyler: That hip’s going to move or it’s not going to.

John: That’s right. That hip, that ankle, that hock, it’s go or no go. There’s no discussion in between with racehorses. Hydrogen therapy: I’ve seen that in clinics I go to, where you put it in your nose and also your ears. Are you seeing any benefits with that, with your clinic and your patients?

Dr. Tyler: I’ve had a few patients anecdotally mention benefits. I don’t have a clinic that I refer to directly for it. We used to use oxygen in a very similar way in the concussion protocols. What we would do is put intranasal oxygen on a patient, similar to an HBOT delivery to the frontal lobe directly, and then put them on a hand bike so that they’re stimulating circulation. I think it takes a similar mechanism of delivery. You’re also seeing hydrogen being added to the water and different things like that. So I think it helps with blood viscosity and delivery of nutrients to certain tissues. I know it can be good for a number of things, I just don’t have a whole lot of experience personally.

John: Got it. What about these cold plunges? Are you working with cold plunges at all? You have one at your house? How is it? Are your patients enjoying it, or is it helping?

Dr. Tyler: I feel like I’m giving a similar answer again, but I think cold plunge is fantastic. We are seeing in female populations that it may not be awesome for their hormonal progressions and cascades. So that’s something to think about if you’re a female athlete or a mom who wants to buy a cold plunge. That’s newer research from the last two years or so. This happens in diet. You know this because you’ve been around enough that diets and supplements all hit their fad phase. I like the dive reflex stimulation, which is what that is geared toward. It gives you that feeling where you’re surprised, and it turns on certain receptors in the central nervous system that actually help you be more resilient to stress. I know that’s true. My wife would make fun of me for saying it. I take a cold shower every single morning. I don’t own a cold plunge personally, but I think cold exposure is a decent thing for your brain. Is it a cure-all? I don’t think so. But I do like that little stimulation of the autonomic nervous system to reduce your responses to stress in the day-to-day, because our world has become so extremely stressful. I made this joke this morning, so I’ll reuse it with you. How many times about 10 years ago did you hear your friends or your buddy that your girlfriend with say, “Yeah, my wife just says that she’s overstimulated? 10 years ago, I never heard that, ever. And now I would say one in three patients come in and say, “I just feel overstimulated all the time.” And you go, “Well, what is that from?” And they don’t know. The answer is, it’s the device in their pocket. It’s toxins in their environment. They’re not doing enough breath work. They’re trying to work on Sundays.

John: Six coffees every morning.

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. Exactly.

John: Six coffees and a Red Bull, but I’m not sure. I’m a little jittery today.

Dr. Tyler: Beyond any fancy therapy device there is, my favorite piece of advice is, “When was the last time you took a break?” And I’m not saying a break where you just sat and you read. I’m saying, “No, no, you sat still for more than five minutes.” A lot of people say, “I can’t remember.” And you go, “All right, well,” this is something that I always say, “I need you to stop starting your day being shot from a gun. You need to take the first 30 minutes, feel your first few breaths. Does my back hurt or does it not? Hone in on what you’re feeling so that the rest of the day can actually start with a better progression and a slower pace. If you start shot from the gun, shaving your face, brushing your teeth, out the door with a cup of coffee, your whole day will be stressful.” And so no one takes breaks anymore. They roll out of bed, they look at their phone, they see three CNN news articles pop up, and they go, “Oh my gosh, the world is terrible.” And so the best advice that I give to people that goes the farthest is, “In the morning, don’t look at your phone. Look out the window.” My wife and I have adopted, we have a giant bird feeder in our backyard right outside every single back window of our home. My wife says it’s her therapy, which it’s mine too. We watch the squirrels, we talk to our kids, they look out, and they’re looking at the birds, and it’s a slow start. Although I have three very young children, so it turns quickly. But it’s that first 30 minutes that makes you feel a little more relaxed, and then you can endure a little bit more.

John: Talk about AI, the rise of AI. Is that helping you both with access to information and other protocols that are working around the world? Is it democratizing? Is AI helping you? So, say Google started in 1998, Tyler. Information was democratized and reshuffled back in ’98. That’s a short and long 20, 27, or so years ago. Now, AI seems to be reshuffling the deck, more information available, more information democratized. And for experts like you, does that make your opportunities to access new or better protocols more available to your client base? Or how is it helping you? Or how is it challenging you?

Dr. Tyler: Personally, I always like to mess with the dials in life, change with the times, be a little bit more go with the flow. So I’m not a practitioner who’s like, “AI is going to ruin my job.” I don’t believe that. I think you can utilize it in a way that’s going to make it better.

John: It’s not going to replace your hands or your brain [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: Exactly. It makes my life easier in that a lot of the questions that I may have still today, from, let’s say, blood labs or some type of weird condition that I myself have not heard of, but I want to learn more about. Obviously, it speeds all of that research up. And then you can also populate the actual research from other practitioners. It’s a good peer comparison. And then our EHR, of course, everybody has updated that to a more fluid progression to help patient charting. None of it’s patient information. It’s more or less just putting more specific dropdowns. It makes the notes and some of the documentation much easier because you can literally talk into your phone and it spits it out in a protected and safe way. But when it comes to the patient coming in, this is another joke. Of course, I still Google, although I’m kind of young, but most of the kids now ChatGPT everything. They come in and say, “ChatGPT told me to do these seven exercises for my brain.” And I go, “That’s fantastic. Those look awesome. If you do it that many times to that side, you’re going to hurt yourself.” So we end up reverse-engineering it back. And there’s a conversation of, it’s just not specific enough to you. Although it has all the means of the internet, it doesn’t have you specifically in mind yet. So a lot of my stuff, and even in PT, I’m sure, or a few PTs I’ve talked to, say the same thing. We’re trying to tailor it to the person every single time, the exact person. We do get a lot of blanketed responses from AI in terms of, what do I do to stretch my quad? So in that regard, I’m a little more hesitant about having patients use it for their problems. Now, if they want to learn more about their concussion or something of that matter, then of course, do some research about it. I always give patients a bunch of areas of the brain to look up. I think that’s a fun thing to do. A patient comes back and go,” I didn’t know I had an interstitial nucleus of Cajal.” And so I have them look that up. I always say, “If you know something about it, you’ll make it better faster,” kind of thing. So back in the day, they’d Google it, they’d have one answer on a notecard, and they’d come in and talk about it. Now they come in with a spreadsheet from ChatGPT about everything that INC does, and I go, “Man, I didn’t know like seven of those.” Because it’s a tiny little area in the upper part of the brainstem, the internet knows a little bit more than I do most days, but it’s good and bad. But I would say, as a doctor, with phone services and business stuff, of course, it’s been so helpful with patient reminders and all that type of stuff. So I think it’s just going with the flow, changing with the times. Use it how you want to, don’t let it use you kind of thing. Don’t go to it for every answer, maybe. But I think it’s been helpful. I do.

John: For our listeners and viewers, we’ve got Dr. Tyler Hurst with us today. He’s the founder, physician, and owner of The Brain Health Clinics. To find Tyler and his colleagues and all the important work they do to help you live your best life, please go to www.thebrainhealthclinics.com. It’ll also be in the show notes, so you don’t have to write it down. Give me three common misconceptions about the brain that you’ve heard over the course of your career, that you want to now give us the truth about. Unwind us from all the nonsense and information, and misinformation that’s out there, on the three top common brain misconceptions.

Dr. Tyler: This one may get me in trouble, but it’s my favorite one, which is, it used to be believed that after 25 years of age, you’re completely developed, all those pathways will never change. I say it kind of rudely, but for the public here, I’ll say it nicer. If you bang your head enough times, you do enough bad things in your life, I think we all know what those could be, you’re going to burn up your brain cells, and you’re never going to get them back. And that’s true for some brain cells. Of course, you shouldn’t behave bad; drinking, smoking, et cetera. You shouldn’t do that all the time, or at all. But what we found through that kind of study of neuroplasticity is that you can burn them up pretty good. It’s not that those specific ones regenerate, but the other wires around it will actually start to maladapt in a positive way or negative way. And you will get some of those functions back, which is why I have a job. And so, the stroke patient is told, “Well, Mrs. Jones,” Mrs. Jones is always my fictional patient, by the way, “Mrs. Jones, that arm’s never going to move again, and your fingers will never feel the same again.” And when you speak in absolutes, guess what happens? It doesn’t happen. So the lady walks out of there, and she goes, “I’m never going to be right again.” And then she comes in here, and we go, “I think we might be out.” So nerves that carry multiple modalities: vibration, pain, temperature, pinprick, soft touch, stretch, all kinds of different receptors on the end of your finger, let’s use your finger as an example. Well, if we find that one of those modalities is still intact, guess what that means? That nerve’s talking to the system. So we will use that one modality. That may be me just stroking the finger over and over again in a gentle way to see if we get a change on the opposite side of the brain. So a lot of times when those patients are told, “You burnt up a bunch of brain cells, you lost brain tissue, it’s never coming back.” The answer is, “Yeah, that street’s blocked, but guess what? There are detours all around it. And we’re going to try to flood those detours with stimulation over and over again until that part of the brain changes entirely.” And then it turns into you moving your fingers again. One of my favorite examples of that is I had a patient, a lovely lady from south of Nashville. She was a nurse, massage therapist, super-educated person. She had a left-side middle cerebral dissection, and she lost speech and the right side of her body. I met her 2 years post-stroke, and the only word that she could say to me was “no.” And so I would ask her, “How are you doing today?” “No.” What’s the weather like out there? “No.” Can you feel your foot? “No.” And I’m like, “Well, she probably can’t.” So that was the only communication that she had, and she went through a bunch of standard rehabilitation. Basically, they said, “You have reached maximal medical improvement, and I don’t think you’re going to get any better from here.” Well, she’s determined, and she wasn’t going to stand for that. So she comes to our clinic. I’ll tell you the therapy because it’s so off the wall that I like to share it. What we did was we found that in her right big toe, she had a patch of stimulation, a patch of sensation that she could feel all of those modalities that I just said. Vibration, she could feel me poking on it. At one point, she could even feel that I could draw a number 2 on the bottom of her toe. So her brain was talking to that toe, and it’s on that right side. So what we did was we had her stimulate that area via a vibrating toothbrush. So her mother, who is an elderly woman, would vibrate the bottom of her foot with the tip of a toothbrush. She would try to grunt her ABCs, “A, B,” and she couldn’t vocalize it. So then we adapted that into, We are going to stretch that toe as much as we can.” We had her use one of those therapy bands that you would get at a PT clinic, “Stretch the toe, stretch the toe, stretch the toe, and try to grunt the ABCs.” It took roughly three months. She would do that every day, four or five times a day for three months, and she eventually, within three weeks, this has been a few years back, my timelines may be a little off, she could call you and tell you which is my favorite part. She got to [inaudible] about three weeks, “A, B, C,” flicking that toe. And then the sensation improved to the knee, improved to the hip, improved to the low back. By that time, she wasn’t just flicking her toe with the band. She was moving the whole leg with the band and saying ABC, singing Happy Birthday, singing her favorite song, an old country song by Reba McEntire. So she would sing an old song from an old Nashville favorite. So now, if I called this woman on the phone, this has been about 5 years ago that this started, her and I would have a full conversation. I’d say, “How’s the weather today?” She’d say, “It’s a little warm out here today,” because we’re hot in Nashville. So she no longer comes in. She can’t drive still. Her right arm, one of my biggest, sticking aside, is that we couldn’t get that arm to actually get its function back. But she can talk on the phone. She can pay some bills. She can think for herself and communicate to her family, and those type of things, all from stimulating her toe and her vocal cords at the same time.

John: So she has a lot of her life back.

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. She’s one of my best salespeople, of course. But there’s a whole host of others like that. So that’s my favorite misconception: after 25, you burn them up, you don’t get them back.

John: You’re done.

Dr. Tyler: And that’s really not true.

John: Neuroplasticity is a real thing, and if you want to lean in and work with an expert like you, there’s always hope.

Dr. Tyler: I think there’s always hope. This sounds more like a brag, and it shouldn’t, but I don’t see that there isn’t some form of growth in almost every single patient, because they’re not guided to something so off the wall and so specific to that example I just gave. So if you start at the bare bones like that, instead of trying to get her to speech with a speech therapist, which is almost impossible because those nerves don’t work. Now may be she can say a handful of words, not the whole vocabulary that she once had, which is amazing. But something’s going to change, and it’s probably going to change for the better. Now, that might not be 100% success, but sometimes in those cases, 25% feels like you just ran a hundred miles, and it gives people that hope back. They’re able to hang out with their family and feed themselves and all those things. That’s why my job is so rewarding. It has nothing to do about money. It has nothing to do with sitting down with cool guys like you. I do that every day, John. We see wins like that every day. My co-workers and I, were slapping high fives about this intention tremor that we were able to accommodate yesterday. What’s funny about that is the first three patients complained that what we did the day before wasn’t helpful. So we walked in the break room and went, “Man, I think we lost it. We don’t have it.” And then this next lady was like, “I was shaking for years, and now I don’t shake. What’s going on here?” And so then we were all slapping high fives, “We’re back. We’re good.” So for every [crosstalk].

John: Every loss, you turn it around. There’s always four quarters to every game. So you [inaudible].

Dr. Tyler: Yeah, exactly.

John: Give me a couple more misconceptions. Give me two more misconceptions, and we’re going to talk about some practical exercises.

Dr. Tyler: Another misconception, outside of you can get your brain tissue back, is a lot of the mental health conditions are purely chemical. That one bothers me a lot, because there’s an element of it that is chemical, but there’s so much research out there that suggests it’s not just serotonin. It’s not just dopamine. And I think what I like to tell people is we know 20 chemicals, and there’s a lot more than that that we don’t know. So to isolate one or two chemicals and think that it’s going to make you not depressed anymore is really a disservice to that patient. So that’s one of my kind of sticks as well, that I don’t love, because we use, of course, pharmaceuticals to alter those chemicals. So that’s one that I would like to see change, and I think more people are attuned to that now. And then another misconception, I think our definition of stress in general is a little bit off, in that it’s usually more of a breakdown of that autonomic system that I was talking about earlier. It’s more or less your brain and your heart not being in rhythm with one another, or maybe your lung capacity has shifted. So now you’re feeling physiological changes in the body that represent to you as, “I’m stressed out about everything.” And so you ask someone, “What’s your anxiety about?” And they go, “I don’t know, it’s about everything.” And if you look at their autonomic exam, it’s like, “Well, yeah, you’re partially tachycardic. Your heart is running very quickly, and that’s because this little cardiac center in the medulla on the right-hand side isn’t controlling the heart mechanism correctly. Not that you’re actually stressed out about your boyfriend and your taxes and all the things at the same time. Because I bet if you got those two things to find their rhythm, you wouldn’t be as stressed out about that topic.” And so a lot of times, when we talk about how to reduce our stress, we never talk about the autonomic nervous system whatsoever. All we hear is you’re stuck in fight or flight. And then the patient goes, “I don’t know what that means,” and the answer is what I just said, “Your brain and your body are not talking to one another in a very specific way. If you did something to change that, you would feel less stressed.” Which is why our neuro rehab techniques have done really well with stress management, because if you feel better, you’re less stressed. And it’s not an “oh, I feel kind of sick, or I feel down,” or whatever. It’s a “my-heart-and-my-brain-talking-to-one-another” feeling. So a lot of people come into this office, and they have no idea that those things are not synced up. They’ve been to the cardiologist, and they’ve been to the neurologist, and both of them are saying, I” don’t know, you’re just stressed out.” And that’s a really bad answer. So we try to hit the wires in between that and make sure that the patient walks up out of here and goes, “I’m not mishandling my stress. Life is stressful, I get that. I’m not actually communicating from brain to the viscera correctly. And if I change that, I will feel less stressed.” And so they walk out of here going, “Man, I feel hopeful. That guy and his team and I myself are now teammates. We’re going to make this chemistry happen, or this connection happen, and I’m going to feel better about myself. That’s great.” And so people leave our office after that first visit. I heard it yesterday afternoon. It was a good one, with so much hope, whether we do anything to them or not. That’s one thing that I’d like to get on this podcast and talk about. I think in medicine we’re lacking time with patients. We’re lacking educational resources too, and doctors are burnt out. It’s not even the doctor’s fault. It’s a time thing. It’s a for-profit thing. It’s an insurance thing. It’s all these things. It’s a model problem. And because doctors are usually good people, they go into it for the right reasons, et cetera. But what we’re able to do in private practice and under this kind of alternative discipline is go, “ey, it may take me four hours to explain this to you, Mrs. Jones, but at the end of that four hours, you’re going to walk out of here with a better understanding of everything that you’ve got going on, and then you’re going to take ownership of all of it.” And everyone understands that if I take ownership of my issues, I can make them better. So the whole part of why I got on here today with you, or wanted to, is I want more people to feel that way. I want them to be able to take ownership and know what’s going on with them instead of just relying on the 15-minute consultation about your fibromyalgia and not understanding what fibromyalgia is at the end of it. That’s where ChatGPT may come in, but they’re going to get 12 answers, and they only need like three. So there’s still a little bit of a lapse between doctor and patient that I just don’t think needs to be there if we had more time.

John: Now that I’m a member of the AARP, talk a little bit about some common things that people can do to help stay their best or freshest, such as some of my doctors tell me paddle games are just amazing; ping pong, tennis, or what’s the game that now everyone loves [crosstalk] that they could keep their brain really sharp playing? One of those paddle games.

Dr. Tyler: Pickleball. I think it starts with actually identifying if they have enough gas to do the paddle game, because a lot of times patients will go out there and they’ll be like, “We’re going to play some pickleball with our friends,” and then they volley it three or four times back and forth and they go, “Oh, I’m winded,” or, “I’m gassed, I feel exhausted.” And then after the session, they get home with their friends, and they’re falling asleep on the couch. So, before you recommend some type of physical activity like that for the brain, I think it’s better to figure out what your actual rehab threshold is before you just jump out there. And then, of course, if you have orthopedic complaints, be careful, brace up, that kind of stuff. But physical activity, of course, if you’re not walking, do it. My biggest advice to people who don’t love to walk: five- to ten-minute walks every single day will keep your brain doctor away. Getting that regular circulation, especially if it’s outside, you get to see the trees, smell the breeze, that type of stuff. So it’s a sensory engagement thing. So take a little walk, look at what you’re eating. People don’t look at what they’re eating. Most of what Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say, “50% of this happened in the kitchen,” which may or may not be true back in the day for him. But that’s true about your brain. So your brain hates certain foods, and we know a lot of them.
You can do all kinds of testing to figure out which ones your brain hates. I just pulled a hair sample on my two-year-old son. We found out he doesn’t do well with bananas, and dude eats a banana every day. So we’re reprogramming.

John: Overall, sugar is bad for all of us.

Dr. Tyler: Overall, sugar is bad. You got to look at those oils. You got to look [crosstalk].

John: [inaudible] For us, no matter what they said 20–30 years ago, the marketing on alcohol: alcohol is, it’s just bad.

Dr. Tyler: Yep. There’s not enough red wine in the world to give you the resveratrol that it promised. So I think, look at what you’re eating, look at what you’re putting in. And then the last brain tip is, do you have a friend that you can laugh with? Do you have a spouse that you can laugh, cry, yell, all those things? Because a lot of people don’t have emotional outlet, especially now. The older population is super isolated; their kids are growing up, that type of stuff, they’re stuck in the home, whatever it may be. So if you don’t have some type of family resource, you got to go out and make a friend, and you got to talk to them regularly. My suggestion is, don’t make one friend every friend, grab like three or four of them.

John: And you’re not talking about the friends that you find on this nonsense. You’re talking about a physical, in-person.

Dr. Tyler: I’m saying face-to-face [crosstalk].

John: Face-to-face. Amen. Hey doc, what about brain games online? Are there any great favorite apps that you give out to your patients? I know your patients vary from performance, enhancement, to horribly traumatic brain victims of events that are thrust upon them, but do you have any favorite apps that you could share with all listeners and viewers?

Dr. Tyler: Yeah, there’s a couple of them that I use. We actually use one in-house that was created by a group of chiropractic neurologists. It’s called Focus Builder. You do have to have a prescription from a doctor who knows what they’re talking about to utilize the exercises, but they’re simple reaction time and eye movement exercises that you can actually tailor to yourself. There’s some generic brain stimulation for the right side of your brain, brain stimulation for the left side of your brain, back-of-your-brain techniques in that app. That’s one. You do have to purchase it, so it costs, I think, 100 bucks or something.

John: Purchase it? Do I need a prescription for it, or I could just purchase and start using it?

Dr. Tyler: You could purchase it and start using it. Now they’ve adapted it to some more catch-all exercises in the back of it. It used to be where you would have to use a practitioner like me to give you specific things [crosstalk].

John: So that’s focusbuilder.com. We could put that in the show notes. Focusbuilder.com.

Dr. Tyler: Focus Builder is the app. Yes sir.

John: Got it. Do you have any others that are [inaudible]?

Dr. Tyler: Yeah. One that I love for the cognitive impairment group, two, actually. One is called BrainHQ. BrainHQ was formulated by a couple of different neurodisciplines: neuropsych, neurocognitive, neurology groups. The engineers of the cochlear implant, they were a part of it. There’s a bunch of research behind it. It’s constantly updating. They have all the cutting-edge kind of stuff, but it works every lobe of the brain. And then it has daily goals, like, do this this many times, that type of thing. So BrainHQ is probably the best catch-all for anybody. And it’s very easy to do, but it’s challenging as well. So it’s a good one. And one last one that I use quite a bit is Peak. It’s very similar to BrainHQ, but it doesn’t have all the research, and it doesn’t update as much. But again, it’s to enhance focus, it’s to enhance memory, it’s to enhance reaction time, that type of stuff.

John: The focusbuilder.com, brainhq.com, and peak.com are apps. People can download them. We’ll put them in the show notes. Hey doc, you’re a young man, and you already have a huge amount of experience and a huge amount of success in your rearview mirror. But of course, you have a long life, God willing, in front of you. What’s next for the brain health clinics? What’s your goal? What’s your dream? What’s coming up?

Dr. Tyler: I’ve been dreaming about this thing for 15 years. So honestly, right now, what we’re working on is using this as kind of the pillar, or the fountainhead location, and as a training resource for future locations we would like to see. I put different timelines on it all the time, so I don’t want to hold myself to a timeline, but I would love it if in the next 10 years of my life, there were 20 of these across the United States. I think opportunities like the one you’ve given me, and some other ones that I’m exploring, will eventually allow for that. Really, the only hang-up right now is the chiropractic schools are not down on numbers by any means; they’re definitely up, but I would say the neurology discipline is very difficult, and it’s hard to get students motivated into learning this extra step. It first starts with: can we get enough people motivated to learn what we know and do it the way that we do it? And so we’re trying to work with the board that I’m a part of, and the actual accredited schools, to motivate students to take this path and do this work. That begins with us being the leaders and training those individuals to give this information out to more people. All right, now I’m in Nashville, Tennessee, with my colleague and our team, but we would love to see it come to LA, or New York, or Atlanta, whomever will have us, whenever. And it’s not even a money grab thing. It’s how many people can we help, how many stories like the one I told you about the non-verbal lady flicking her toe, and now she’s verbal can we get? Because I don’t think that it stops with just this clinic. I think the more people that hear this story, the more motivated they would be to actually not just fund it or whatever, but jump on that train and help us on that mission.

That’s what we’re shooting to do right now. But right now, it’s been bootstrapped and supported by me and a few others to get it to this point. We’re not even close to done yet. We love what we do here. I could do this until I’m old and crippled myself, but why not give it to more people.

John: You’re right. With your youth and your energy and your success rate already, doc, I bet you it’s going to happen. For our listeners and viewers, to find Dr. Tyler Hurst and his colleagues and all the very important work they’re doing that you just listened to and heard about, please go to www.thebrainhealthclinics.com. Doc, thank you. I hope there are more of you in the future. I hope you bring this to the top 30 or 40 cities in America. It would be a blessing for all of us in this country. I know we’d all feel a lot better if we had a chance to come in and work with your clinic. Thanks again for your time, thanks again for your wisdom, and thanks again for doing what you do.

Dr. Tyler: John, I appreciate you so much for having me. I can’t thank you enough.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage, or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.