Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
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Security Halt!
From Trauma to Triumph: Chris & Marsha Lessard’s Fight for Veteran Mental Health
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In this powerful episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Chris and Marsha Lessard—two extraordinary individuals turning personal pain into purpose. Chris, a former Green Beret, and Marsha, a former law enforcement officer, open up about their shared journey through PTSD, TBI, autism treatment, and the challenges of military transition. Together, they founded a brain treatment clinic focused on holistic healing for veterans, first responders, and their families.
You’ll hear how their lived experiences shaped their mission, what the Brain Treatment Center is doing differently, and why community outreach and advocacy are essential in breaking mental health stigmas in the veteran world.
🎯 Don’t miss this inspiring conversation about resilience, recovery, and redefining your life’s mission after trauma.
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Chris Marsha how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going how?
Speaker 1:are you Doing well. It's great to have you guys. I rarely find a couple, a duo, a high achievers that are in the fight, as I like to say, behind all the things that are affecting our veteran and our soft community as well. So today I really want to dive into what you guys have been able to do together in such an impactful mission with your Brain Treatment Center. With what you guys are going on, yeah, I'm blown away having you guys on Broken Brains with Bruce Amazing conversation but now it's my turn to be selfish and get you guys to share your journey with my audience. So please, guys, take it away. Thanks, we're honored to be here and get you guys to share your journey with my audience. So please, guys, take it away.
Speaker 3:Thanks. We're honored to be here. I mean I usually start because our journey really started with our son and Chris. I'll let you tell your background first. Who are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So who is this dude? Yeah, no, my name is Chris. I was went into the army in 2000,. Joined the airborne infantry in the 509th, went to selection, went to third group for a while, left that thinking, hey, you know, there's this, see what else is in the world. Got out for two months and said, screw this, I'm going back in. At least part-time, joined 20th group and then bounced from 20th group and 19th group for pretty much the rest of the time until I was medically retired at 18 and a half years in 2018. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So when we met I was a police officer and had no interest in thinking I was going to get married and settle down and stuff like that going full steam. And then we met. He swept me off my feet, drove eight hours for our first date and, um, we within a year. Pretty quickly we were like, okay, we're going to have at least one more kid. I came into it with an older daughter that he adopted and, um, he went on ADOS orders at SOCOM, at Care Coalition it used to be called Care Coalition, it's Warrior Care now.
Speaker 3:It's a care rep and we were down in Tampa and we had our little guy. He was two. We had quickly had another. They're 18 months apart and our almost two-year-old regressed like almost overnight into nonverbal autism. Now, like Florida was great, you know, it was like a different service every day of the week. You want speech, you want OT, you want it, you have it, you get it. There you go, tricare covers it. But then we decided we were going to move up to New England instead of renewing the orders and Chris was gone. A lot. I mean, I was pretty independent at that point. I'd been a cop, I'd been a single mom before, but we were a really good team and he was gone. We always say like on average, I don't know, it was almost 10 months out of every year for almost the first decade of our marriage.
Speaker 1:I just lost your video. Did you guys get a phone call or something?
Speaker 3:It popped up something about hand gestures. Yeah, put your hands down, marcia yeah, don't do it.
Speaker 2:Those pesky notifications I'll block her hands if she starts to do it again yeah.
Speaker 3:So we moved up to new england and there were no services, uh, really available, readily available. I was driving like two hours each way just for really poor speech therapy and it was different. People don't realize how different it is state to state. So right around that time Task Force Dagger had been kind of following our story and they reached out and they said, hey, they're doing this treatment out in California and we're doing it for the vets after they're retired, but it knocks out PTSD and TBI really well. We're seeing really good effects with it. But off label, they're treating autism. Can we send you guys out there? So just right around that time we got in a diagnosis of severe nonverbal autism for a little guy and I was like, absolutely put us on a plane. We had looked into it, he didn't have any of the contraindications and we got out there.
Speaker 3:Luke is our son. He was a super responder. So at this point he hadn't really said an authentic word in almost two years and Chris and I, like most people like at that point in their ages, had gotten really into like CrossFit, and CrossFit is a gateway drug to like microbiome and cellular health and we were just really in all of it and so that filtered down to our kids. They ate what we ate. We didn't eat a lot of processed food. It was all organic, it was really clean and we had really gotten into the gut biome stuff. So that's why I really think Luke was a super responder to this, because now, being in a clinic where we practice it, we don't always get these results but we do get results. So about three weeks into the treatment, three to four weeks into the treatment, his first EEG came back. What typical severe autism comes back like really high delta wave, really low alpha. So the only way we can really equate that in like common terms is he probably felt like he was living in a lucid dream with a high delta wave like that and was no alpha wave.
Speaker 3:So every morning part of our program is morning sunlight, so I would take the two littles out in the jogging stroller and I'd run a few miles on Newport Beach and one morning I'd given him the iPad just so I could have some quiet while I was running. And I went to take it away from him and he was really really fussy and I said, oh, buddy, you didn't want to go to the beach with me today. And he looked me right in the eyes and he goes. I was busy today, mama, and I almost fell over Like he's talking. I go right back to the treatment center. I'm like he's talking, you know, and it just snowballed from there. So Chris flew right out and, um, he said I'll never forget it, like we were leaving the San Diego airport and we're catching up, you know, and, and Luke just says in the back seat, he's like hey, dad, there's a school bus. And he's like pull over, like he hasn't heard this kid talk since he lost his words.
Speaker 3:And it was it's just like it's surreal, especially now, because to jump ahead I normally don't jump ahead this early in a story luke no, please do yeah, luke, now in the combination of all the therapies we've done. We just had him retested. He no longer tests on the autism spectrum, he's a fully functioning, happy, normal.
Speaker 3:You 13 turning 14 year old, really hormonal and angry and I just can't. Like you know, he's in the civil air patrol, he wants to be a pilot. We're very faith-based people and, like more than anything, he wants to be a dad and, like Mert, gave him the opportunity to have his life back.
Speaker 2:And it's really incredible because you know we were in the mindset of this child is going to be living with us forever. You know what are we going to do when we pass? Who's going to be watching over him? And now he has a legit chance at having a normal normal. Yeah, quote, unquote, yeah but it our net.
Speaker 3:Our goal was never like bring him back fully. Our goal was with all the things we did. It was like how do we just like give him the best? Our goal was with all the things we did. It was like how do we just like give him the best life possible and bring out the best in him? Like our, our service now, like I was a cop, he was an army, like very service oriented people, but like our service now became like how do we do the best for this kiddo? And we so blessed, we have a fully recovered kiddo now.
Speaker 3:But I always say the second miracle that came out of that was like right after Chris blew out, we're sitting around the fire at that night. Like back then, when this was newer, they were only treating guys that were already out like they wouldn't impact. You know they wouldn't less impact the investment, right. So I'm sitting around the fire and these older retired guys are all talking about why they're there symptoms of TBIBI. And this is when these conversations were still really taboo, like you did not talk about these things.
Speaker 3:And I remember, right, I remember looking over, it's like in law enforcement you don't cross the thin blue line, right? I look over at this guy and he's like laughing. And I'm like stop laughing at them. And he's like, yeah, he's like no guys, these things are normal in our community. This older gentleman like walked up, he put his hand on his shoulder and he was like Chris, if this is your normal, you really need to go get scanned for TBI. And he went home and he did. And that's really where that part of the journey starts, because if he hadn't said that, I don't think he would have and I don't know where we would be right now, because he was holding things up well in every capacity Great. We would be right now because he was holding things up well in every capacity Great, doing great stuff in the army, big goals, being a great husband. But in the in-between, we know now like what I didn't know then was there was a lot of darkness and despair.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of it was. You know, I was, you know, compartmentalizing a lot and I, you know, and that's what we're really good at, that's why we're chosen to do the jobs we do, right, you know, we can go through an experience, do something and say, all right, I'm going to put that over there, I want to carry on and continue on, and I was doing a lot of that. Unfortunately, you know, I wasn't aware that a lot of the stuff that was happening to me was from even from my childhood. It was a lot of stuff, exactly, and and you know it's funny because even the childhood stuff, um, you know, again, no one talks about it. But when you really start breaking it down and you talk to other people in the community, you're like, oh, my goodness, it's copy and paste. Um, so you know, I would just shut my mouth about it until I realized all the stuff that you know from childhood was starting to affect now with TBI.
Speaker 2:So, background on that, I was in. You know it wasn't a cool war story or anything like that. I wasn't a hero or anything. You know we flipped an ATV in Afghanistan, rolled down when I came to, I was looking down at the sky and then the ground was like up, so like the world had reversed upside down. I was like what in the hell is going on? Then finally it came back Um, it's, you know that. And then all blasts and you know flashbangs and bad training and jumps with, you know PLFs or BS. Pretty much it's feet head. Um, at least all mine were.
Speaker 3:Dive school.
Speaker 2:Dive school blackouts there. You know all the thing. I was a shallow water blackout king man. Um, I'll own it. Um, so you know all that stuff. I you know. I knew something was up but I couldn't come to terms with it. So I would go see a doc and say, hey, I wouldn't, you know, tell them everything that I was doing. You know alcohol, painkillers, all the things, anything I could self-medicate myself with.
Speaker 3:I would but those painkillers were like, freely given out by the Viet and military docs. Like, here you go Percocet and Emotron for everything.
Speaker 2:Not to say that there weren't painkillers, sometimes overseas, while we were there, things of that nature. So I would go through a lot of that stuff self-medicating, wouldn't, you know, fully say everything that was going on with me? So they'd say, oh, you're depressed, here's an SSRI, okay. And that would just compound on top of things.
Speaker 3:What a lot of people don't realize. And now so Chris and I, what we didn't say is we're both in school to be mental health counselors and before this I was doing some outreach stuff to other special operations wives just kind of like what are these puzzle pieces? As a special operations wife and as an autism mom, it's always like we're grasping at like what is next, because healing is never linear and there's always many components and we're all like uniquely divinely created beings by the creator Right. So like it's going to be different for all of us. Like his ACEs score his childhood you know um score from. Like the ACEs kind of assesses how trauma resilient you'll be, which I think most SF guys probably have a pretty high ACEs from their childhood, really high, like it tops out. So his, his healing is going to look much different than anybody else's. So just kind of trying to piece together all of these components.
Speaker 3:And then I often hear when, when you got, when they got on the SSRI, they calmed down, but then they started having like psychotic or delusional episodes, like sustained delusions, and really being on the mental health side of it. Now I attribute that to you, go in and you hear these buzzwords that are prominent in our society, like anxious and depressed. Well, that must describe what I am. So I go in and I say I'm depressed and I'm anxious, and I don't elaborate on it, and you give me an SSRI, but shoot, actually I have a TBI and now that's making me literally crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, the big problem we have with the oversimplification of the problem is, when you look at the Venn diagram of co-occurrence symptomology, you have the TBI, you have PTSD and it's way easier to say, oh, you got all these here on PTSD and it's a lot cheaper to pay somebody on their benefits for PTSD. That makes it easy and wraps it up when guys are still getting out right now, still, the number one test when they go to their QTC appointment for determining if they have a traumatic brain injury is a MOCA test, which we all know at best is within 24, 48 hours of a concussion. And that is criminal. It's absolutely criminal. They don't take any of the experience or the actual performance and job of the individual into consideration.
Speaker 1:I know this because when I went through mine it was like I'm special forces, I'm a warrant officer. Here's all the things that I've done. They didn't even have my records pulled up. I was lucky that I sat down with a care coalition provider, flo, who gave me the information to say you know what? When you show up, you show up with your entire I love me book, I don't care how big it is. Print it out, bring it up to them, because the doctors don't know. They don't understand the job, they don't understand what the capacity of being a guy from special operations or let alone a mortarman, an artillery man, somebody that's like their entire job in training and in combat is behind a gun line these are the things that nobody's freaking talking about as being dangerous. We all think about the combat exposure. Nobody's talking about the stuff that you do on your day-to-day job and that's criminal. Yes, that's that's huge.
Speaker 2:It's because it's it's a lot of. It's not just the stuff you experience overseas, that's not as bad. It's training, it's the lifestyle, it's the pressure we put on ourselves.
Speaker 1:A static load yes, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And many when we're talking about the VA. I mean, I think in our case there are times where they held us up, where it would have completely fallen off the rails, and you know we're being very peripheral about this. It fell off the rails like and I think when, like the wives have these conversations, we delve deeper into what these darker aspects are, because self medication can happen on all different planes and when they're away it's more accessible, it's more culturally available and relevant and it's more like you know, you do you stuff like that. But then that is really another level of self-sabotaging back home which comes from the TBI and the PTSD.
Speaker 2:And the problem with that is, you know, she was my support system. The problem was I wasn't around my support system, so then self-medicated when I was away from her, and now I'm doing things that I regret, I hate myself for. And now that's just adding on to all the stuff that's already there.
Speaker 3:But the VA providers, when you sit down with them I mean I think when you sit down with the ones who directly work for the VA they're a little bit better.
Speaker 3:But some of them are just contractors and I remember walking into one office when he was doing his rating and he walked out and he's like she asked me three questions and I was and I like drove back to the office. I was like hold the phone. You didn't even go over this and she said, well, he seems sad. I didn't want to bring it up and I was like I do In all fairness, I do. But if you don't and now being on the mental health counseling side of it if you don't have an advocate, if you don't have an advocate like that who's willing to say there's more wrong, or, like you know, if you're a single person who doesn't have that support system to come in and say, yeah, anxiety, but also this, this and this, you get lost. You get lost in the system.
Speaker 1:That's why guys have to. That's one of the things that I talk about is, you have to develop empathy, the ability to be vulnerable, and then you have to learn the. You have to learn the ability to advocate for yourself, because, by and large, for a vast majority of our careers, in our life, we walk into a doctor's office and it's like we're a newborn. We climb up, we don't say shit, we have all these, we're just waiting for them to say something and we're like please, please, magically know what's wrong with me and help me, rather than saying I have something wrong with my brain, my left eye doesn't focus, I can't remember how to get home and the only thing that goes through my head is our thoughts of killing myself. Can you please get me somewhere to get help? No shit.
Speaker 1:The moment that I finally found peace and found myself getting help was the scariest moment of my life being vulnerable with a provider and that's when it's like and it wasn't even. I didn't even have the aha moment two months down the road later like, wow, what got me here? Oh, I was vulnerable enough to ask for help and say something, and it can't be our wives. Our wives do a great job of doing it, but we have to develop that. That's the hardest. Freaking thing to tell guys is like you got to do it for yourself, brother.
Speaker 2:You got to figure it out bro, the first time I I really did it and it took me a long damn time to really understand that. And I went in there and I was vulnerable and I was just like bawling just because all that stuff just came out for like I don't know a day or two, yeah. And then they were like all right, now you got to go talk to another doctor and do it again. I was like you have got to be kidding.
Speaker 3:Well, I really think too, like and I've never thought about it like this until you just said it now Like I thought about it, but not in this capacity.
Speaker 3:It's like we went through some heavy stuff with this right and I knew that Chris is my soulmate. There was no way I was ever going to abandon him on this journey. But there became a point where you know a special operations wife if you're a good one, you're very good at being independent, taking care of the kids, getting things done and right, supporting them because this job is their dream and because they're doing such incredible things right. Like you really support that with all your heart and your being there became a time post his retirement, which really hit him hard, and he had some big goals with you know, go, you guys are always constantly reaching, which I really admire. Like, okay, I hit this now what's next? Where I looked at him and I said I can't do this for you anymore. Like I can't make the appointments, I can't go in there and tell the story. I'm here, I will be here, but you have to do it and I'm withdrawing.
Speaker 3:She held me accountable until you do it, cause you gotta be fully in, cause I'm fully in, I need you fully in on this. And it took, you know he was in after that, but it took a full year till we really synced back up on that and I was like, wow, I have a reciprocal partner again. He did it and he did the work. He was reading a book every two days and it was always a podcast on these different elements of healing and that's what really brought our clinic together. Most Merck clinics are standalone Merck clinics and they are doing incredible work. Right. But when we were given the opportunity to open this clinic, Chris had finally, after a decade on over a dozen medications and like a lot of medication failures, a lot of side effects was a shell of himself decided to do Merck, and not even because he was going to do Merck, because he wanted to get more Merck for our son. So they went as a tag team duo and they said hey, you guys are like you know, marcia, you're trying to be a mental health counselor have you guys considered opening a clinic? And we were like if we could help other people in the way we're helped, absolutely. But we got the opportunity to do it our way.
Speaker 3:So we brought in a retired special operations doctor who was doing a full functional assessment in the beginning, because we've got to make sure the hormones are right, we've got to make sure the metabolic and the cellular health is right, we've got to look at the methylation, we've got to look at the toxin load, because if you're not purging those toxins that's really getting in the way of full healing. We brought in a nurse who does she's a nurse anesthetist, she's top of her game, but she does IV ketamine therapy in the clinic. We're bringing in HBOT. We're doing a program with an occupational therapist, because we usually see a trauma reemergence around week three with MERT, particularly in the special operations guys. But it doesn't always look like ah, I'm experiencing these flashbacks. Sometimes it can look like chronic pain, sometimes it can look like different things, like that.
Speaker 3:So we've added myofascial release. Every week that every veteran comes in, we offer them do you want a myofascial release with our occupational therapist? And then at the end of the year we'll be bringing them counseling. But we're going to try to do it in a non-traditional way. We're going to add a lot of EMDR and neurofeedback and really hands-on stuff because we feel that people heal in community together with a driven purpose. So we could retell our stories all day long. Retelling my police stories doesn't make me really feel any better about them, but when I'm purposeful with my intent and doing something mission-oriented, it does, and I think we kind of come together on that mindset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's absolutely amazing to see you guys taking your journeys and now turning it into purpose and turning it into a mission to help others, and that's something that I've seen. Obviously, we know this as being guys on the ground. Whenever we go through something, it's all about hey, get the PDSS guys spun up on this. It's always about bettering somebody else's journey and shortening the response time, and that's that's what I love advocating for Shorten your amount of time in the unknown. Everybody, everybody feels like they're Superman there and I get it. I was there, but at some point you're going to hit it. Everybody hits it, Every human, every human. You're a human being, you're a man. You are meant to break. How do we build you up faster? How do we build you up faster and really understand that everybody has to come to the understanding of like.
Speaker 1:Look, there's three powerful domains mind, body and spirit. I know a lot of us don't want to talk about the spirit part. That took me forever. That was the last spirit. Spirit was the last pillar. It often is for a lot of guys. But you have to address all three and the holistic approach to the patient, the idea that we have to go to one doctor for one thing and then go to the next doctor. It's exhausting, it doesn't work and it's led more guys to feeling hopeless and and that and being you know, and overcome by that feeling that it's never going to get better.
Speaker 1:I talk about it and I see it, and people describe it all the freaking time, especially when they're not in the special operations community. They don't have that. They don't have access to prep, they don't have access to star program, and that's something that I like about you guys. Like you're, you're building something where you're walking in and you have a whole suite of care, not just one thing, which is what we need more of yeah yeah, and we're trying to make it super accessible.
Speaker 3:So we take TRICARE for our guys that want to do RTMS. Tricare covers the myofascial release and we're trying to get more and more things kind of in that bubble. We do really niche in-depth labs and we get that covered by TRICARE.
Speaker 2:So you know we're not doing the peripheral stuff.
Speaker 3:Our doc is great at getting some of that stuff through LabCorp. But we are really looking at the cellular health function, the toxin loads, you know, the organic acids, the metabolics and the methylation, and looking at just your hormones and your basic vitamins, like what do you got going on? Vitamin.
Speaker 1:D Right.
Speaker 3:Do you need your testosterone tank? Do you need vitamin A and vitamin D? Well, like you know.
Speaker 2:And that vitamin A and vitamin D Well, like you know and that was one of the things for me that you know. Another thing that doesn't get talked about as well, it's TBI, ptsd, which you know, that is part of it. But, like for me, when I first did all that, those really in depth testing, they found that I was extremely high in mercury, which I didn't even know that was a thing. Extremely high in lead Lyme disease, extremely. You know, they said my testosterone was in that normal range, but it was like army normal.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and you know low vitamin D, like you said. So it was just like, my goodness, all this shit is all on top of the other stuff that you already know about. So, yeah, it is a lot to address.
Speaker 3:We're getting all the providers at our clinic certified in the fellowship through MedMaps and that has a pediatric focus but it applies to everybody because it is really looking at how to bring all these things together.
Speaker 3:And at the core of all that we're talking about it's either, you know, the cell danger response or it's basal ganglion encephalopathy, which is swelling of certain parts of the brain because of mercury load or toxin exposure, different things like that If you have viruses and bacteria that you're exposed to overseas. And one of the things that we're hoping to hit hard on in the clinic within the next year is some of these vector-borne illnesses. Dr Bransfield does this great lecture and he puts up this slide of the 25 most common that everybody's exposed to when they're over there and these are bites from flies and ticks and fleas and all these things like that. The symptoms of these vector borne illnesses mimic, ptsd and TBI, rage cycles, lack of empathy, brain fog, all that. So we're really trying to bring together this program where you might not have any of those but you might just have the PTSD because the trauma is real.
Speaker 1:But now you know, but now you know Exactly, at least be able to test and find out.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, At least be able to test and find out. And if it's both, what? If it's both, then we really need to hit both, because these are not independent systems. These are interdependent systems. You're a whole person. One of the things with myofascial release that I find really great, as somebody who's taught yoga before, is a long time ago they thought the fascia was this inert tissue, and if you peel back an orange and you see the white that encases all the meat, that is the fascia of the orange. We have that throughout our entire body and this is a smart system. It's got blanks, uh, stem cells in it. It runs energy through the body. It's why acupuncture works and when you have trauma it stores in different areas of the fascia Stores in your body.
Speaker 3:Yep, the body keeps score and a well-trained occupational therapist that does this well can move that trauma out of the body without having massive effects pain, emotional responses and things like that.
Speaker 1:We've known that for a while and Bessel van der Kolk does a great job of breaking that down. The body keeps the score. We've known the benefits of yoga since the VA did its own study on it, but even now, what do we get? Very few VA centers offer the holistic wellness online access to mindfulness and meditation and yoga, even though we know they've published by their own guys, published by their own personnel. We know that we can get people to unlock movement in their body that they've not had access to since they've undergone that trauma, whether it's a car accident or something that went down range. We know intimately now that your body, your systems are interconnected and if you're going through trauma, if you're stuck in fight or flight, it reacts differently. And there's so many different things.
Speaker 1:I talked to guys that have dealt with gastrointestinal issues, canker sores through their entire life and they're they just treat it as normal things. You peel back the layer and you realize, oh, I grew up abused, I grew up malnourished, I grew up not not having a safe space, a safe place to go and sleep at night, always bouncing from home to home. And then they start doing the work, they go see a provider and then all the things they experience canker sores, gastrointestinal issues, dissipate. All that stress is locked in her body and not enough people are talking about it. I don't know if people are. It's far easier to get prescribed medication for it. Oh, we'll give you a medication for this. It's like dude. All you have to do is get the person a reset, Finally be able to find that baseline.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, I think, our society, not our community, but society as a whole. They kind of eat up that, hey, what is that? One thing, the one medication, whatever it might be. So we're kind of, you know, we gravitate towards that because it's easy, like things that are easy and convenient, right, and that's unfortunate because it takes way more than just that one thing.
Speaker 3:That's part of the healing journey, though, because we experienced that even in functional health, and we try to hold people's hands very like, empathetically through it, because once they realize it's not a magic pill, then they want a magic supplement.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Right, You're not going to cold plunge your way out of trauma if you've never dealt with it right Cold plunge.
Speaker 2:You can help, but it's not the end. All be all, oh my.
Speaker 3:God yeah. Get your vitamin D, get your EMDR. You got to do all of it and we're trying to create this very comprehensive model. But we're not a one-stop shop, so we're looking for people to partner with to be the resource. We have a great dentist that we partner with to keep people off the CPAP machines. He does this great airway expansion. We just met with an amazing mental health therapist.
Speaker 1:We got to dive into that for a little bit, because that is one of the most prescribed pieces of tech in the military and it's so common it's one of the most guaranteed things that the VA now doesn't give a percentage for. It is a CPAP. Traveling with that little machine I had one that I. It was one of those things where my wife could not get a a decent night of sleep. And it's like what? What is this constant? We're not even treating the issue. We just want you to be able to not die in your sleep. We're not going to address the root cause and it's like and and here I am like I don't use it, I don't need it anymore.
Speaker 2:Such a horrible thing that we're aspiring to not die yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to get better. I don't want you to get to a point where you don't need this. I just don't want you to die. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3:I think it's Dr Perlmutter. He wrote the Better Brain book or Brain Maker book. We keep it in the clinic because it's got such good like protocols in it. But he says often like you better sleep, like it's your job, like sleep is so important.
Speaker 3:We spend, you know, half our lives asleep and when you're sleeping people don't realize the regeneration that you get, the healing that you get on a cellular level. You get this wash of fluid over the brain that clears up this oxidative stress. When you get to certain levels of sleep and you got to have your sleep you know brain chemicals and things working properly for all of that to happen to truly be restorative for optimal healing. So you throw in something like oh, you need a CPAP. Okay, I mean, if you really need it, you don't know. On their way, don't die sleeping, but we need to be able to get you through restful sleep. It's a major part of our program. So what this dentist has done and many of them do it they've designed this orthodontic appliance called the ALF and it naturally spreads open the upper palate. It's not the old school thing we all dreaded with the key in it that cranks your bones open, but it replaces the way it restructures the way your tongue sits in your mouth, which causes your airway to naturally open. When I have it in, it comes in and out every six weeks. They adjust it for a certain period of time and it can work really well to avoid a CPAP machine, and one of the things that comes with it is, if you're somebody who's been stuck in fight or flight most of your life, you have a high ACEs score.
Speaker 3:You know you're ready for this job because you're a go-getter, you're highly compartmentalizing things, things like that. You've probably been in some level of fight or flight for a long time and it becomes normal and you start to feel numb to it. You don't understand why other people don't think and feel the same way like that, because that is your normal. It's like me telling you the sky is purple right now and you're like it's legit blue, right. But when they put this thing in your mouth it causes an immediate reaction to the vagal tone in your body.
Speaker 3:The vagus nerve connects at the back here, goes down to the gut links into all those gut issues. That's part of the reason why when you've had a lot of trauma, you're having a lot of gut issues and it causes immediate vagal toning. And for somebody who's never had that high level of tone or hasn't had it in a decade, it could be a little weird for a few days. But then you start to realize after that that, okay, I'm still hypervigilant, which most of us like to have. We want to know what's going on, we want to know where people's hands are, but the cortisol dump associated with it, like all of a sudden, that's gone yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:So, like I'm liking this, I'm so like I'm liking this, I'm digging this, so I'm probably gonna keep this thing in my mouth forever, but most people do it about two years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's great to see those, those sort of devices come and get more recognition and understanding because it gives us options. That's something that we don't have right now is the options when you're going through the va process. You go through and do your sleep study yeah, your sleep's fucked. Here's this machine, welcome to the darth vader. Go through and do your sleep study and like, yeah, your sleep's fucked. Here's this machine, welcome to the Darth Vader club.
Speaker 1:And it's like fuck dude, like that, you're too young and even in your late 30s, early 40s, you are still too fucking young to be walking around with the CPAP machine. Yeah, and it's important to understand there's, you know there's. There's the uh. I forget the uh, the breakdown, but you know sometimes you need it because it's it's fucked up here. But if it's because of weight, because of the way you're sleeping, diet, exercise, do whatever you can to get off that machine. If it's not disruption within your cognitive abilities, uh, try to get off the machine. You owe it to yourself. It literally is one of the things that it. All you have to do is become disciplined, figure out what you need to do yes get off of it like.
Speaker 1:One of the greatest books that I always recommend is james. Uh, james nestor's uh breath or breathe, sorry yes understanding, like the importance of breathing properly.
Speaker 1:you you guys are talking a little bit on it on bruce's podcast, but that's one of the things that we all need to check. If you're not breathing from your belly, if you're and you know this is a diver man like the breath is the most important thing to connect to. Like it is your understanding of like OK, I'm safe. Like the rapid, shallow breathing fucks people and we're treating it like it's a normal thing.
Speaker 1:We're treating it like it's a normal thing. I thought I was breathing normal, I'm at the peak of my career and then I found that book and I'm like, wow, what the hell am I doing? I'm a mouth breather, I've got breathing issues and it's like that. It breaks it down expertly, marvelously. I'll put a link to it in this episode description. But guys, learn how to breathe. It's you think that because you're an athlete, you think that because you work out, I don't need any issues? I don't have any issues breathing. I was like you probably do. Yeah, you know breathing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like that same thing, like, oh, I know how to run, but yet the way we run, cause no one taught know. Same same things.
Speaker 3:But that book is amazing. I love that. One Another great resource we use for that in the clinic is heart math, and there's all different types of heart math you can get.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:But there's a new version of it where it's a clip. It sits right on your chest, it clips to your ear, it takes five minutes and there's an app on your phone that literally expands. I tell everybody I got all these. I got certified in everything I thought could help us. I did.
Speaker 3:I went across the country getting certified in primitive reflex integration and yoga and fascia and all this stuff, because I have my why right here at home and we weren't finding the resources that were comprehensively. So I was like, well, I'm just going to do it, I'm going to be the resource, but breathing is one of the huge things and I went to like this top, you know, world-class meditation teacher and he taught all the different types of meditation, breath work, and I did it in class. But then, like I don't do it when I'm by myself, because I am that same like alpha type, like I'm leading this and I'm starting this program, this project. Same like alpha type, like I'm leading this and I'm starting this program, this part, but I do it when I do it with other people.
Speaker 3:So if you can't do it yourself, teach somebody else how to do it, or use like the heart math app, which you can easily access at home yeah, it's important to understand.
Speaker 1:I deal with this on on a daily basis, mindfulness instructor, certified at mbsr, and the first thing that goes out the window is my own practice. Yeah, fully knowing tonight I will not be going to sleep because I've got deadlines and do-outs. I have to go and what's the most important thing? The most important thing is restorative sleep and here I am already already hard focused on I am not going to sleep. I've got do-outs, I am in a master's program and I have to get things turned in. But it's life, we're not going to sleep. I've got do outs, I am in a master's program and I have to get things turned in.
Speaker 1:But it's life. We're not going to be perfect every single day. But if I can give you the tools, if I can show you the way and show you like, hey, I might not be good for you know, I'm 70%. That's way better than where I was before I knew any of this stuff. That still gives people an avenue approach for, for, for, because some people will take to it, they will see it, they'll see the benefits and they'll take to it. And it's not about being 100 every single fucking day. We're humans, we're not computers, we're not. We're not mark suckaberg, we're, uh, we're real deal human beings I always say like.
Speaker 3:I say it's like what? Like with mert mert's a good example with that, because we're monitoring your alpha wave, like, like we're looking at your alpha wave, you get alpha popping where it should. It's like tuning in an old radio. But people always say, like, what do I expect? And I can give them a generalization. But it is like with all of this, like you're walking up the stairs in the dark and then the lights are coming on each stair, like you don't know exactly what you're going to get, but at least you're taking the steps up the stairs.
Speaker 1:You're better off than you were before. Absolutely. You know, looking at your journey, where you've come from and where you're at today, what's next for you guys? I mean, it's beautiful, like I said earlier, like finding high achieving couple that have gone through suffering, that have gone through incredible painful situations, and then both both you guys being committed to the betterment and helping other people within your community, within your veteran community, within the soft community. What's next? What are you guys working on?
Speaker 3:so I, we're both finishing second master degrees now. My first sets of degrees were from hopkins. I'm at catholic, now finishing up another masters. We both intend to be in clinical practice and mental health counseling within the next year Year and a half. Year and a half. I plan on going right into a PhD on behavior and cognition. I really want to work within the first responder and special operations communities. Chris has got some stuff he's working on, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know I, when I was out in Colorado, some things hit me out there operations communities chris has got some stuff he's working on. You know, yeah I. You know I, when I was out in colorado, some things hit me out there, um, and so I planned doing mert, doing mert, yeah, yeah, not doing anything else in colorado um, hey, don't put a stigma on it.
Speaker 2:That stuff's great for everybody exactly exactly, um, but yeah, while I was doingERT I kind of came to a conclusion for myself. So it's there's a book that I want to write in my future. That's kind of kind of my experiences, but it's going to be more faith based, one of the biggest things that I've and, like you, kind of brought it up as a spiritual pillar, and that's always the last one that we kind of arrive to, and for me, from my point of view, really should be the first I've to, and for me, from my point of view, really should be the first. Um, without that spiritual side, honestly, there's really not much else. All the stuff that I've done, it wouldn't have mattered. If you know, my faith in God wasn't there, um, so that's kind of what you know. I plan on this book and then you know other things from that. We'll see what happens. But, um, but yeah, we, you know we're looking to expand up here where we are with the brain treatment center as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we want to move to another. Well, we want to keep our location in Ashburn. That's really our flagship location that has the whole comprehensive care model, but we want to make more accessible to some of the active duty and veterans that are like closer into Washington DC. So the hope is, you know, we're preying on it, we're going to hope to expand closer to Alexandria and still have a lot of the stuff that we have at the flagship location available. We want to, we want to make these programs bigger and more comprehensive and we keep like having all these cool people pop up.
Speaker 3:Like I can do this, I want to be a part of this here and we're just excited to kind of see where that goes and how we can help a little bit more and how we can use our story.
Speaker 3:Because, like I think behind the scenes we'd always wind up with like another couple who was like at the beginning of the struggle and we would sit down with them and we could kind of be the hope. Because I know when we first started with this, when I realized like how deep that iceberg went, I didn't know how we could ever get here Right, and so I think part of that, I think it's just like especially in the special operations community, like for other couples who are just figuring out like oh shoot, he's got a TBI. Oh shoot, it's almost like he's got a second whole life out there. I didn't know about um like there is hope and like we've always been really strong. Whenever he was home and we were together it was like it was always really really good. It's better now than it ever was before. So we hope to be that hope for people and kind of guide them through that and work clinically in the mental health space there for that too.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I cannot wait to see all the stuff develop and pan out. Is, um, it needs? It's up to us. There's, there's no QRF coming, there's no outside entity that's going to help stem this loss and, um, veteran suicide, it's, it's us, it's, uh, the community that rallies around and picks up this, this mission set, and then you guys are the proof of it.
Speaker 1:At any moment, you guys would have been able able should have been able to just walk away and just focus on your family and your own healing, but you chose to go into this and I can't commend you enough and I and I'm fortunate to have met you guys and I cannot wait to continue championing your cause across every available uh app and streaming service that I have access to, a social media account that I work for. So, uh, whatever you guys need, I am at your service because we need to be able to share these stories, because you will inspire other individuals that are going through their journey to one day pick this up and say you know what I'm going to be the next version of Chris or Marsha. We have to be able to give back, and this is the greatest calling we can find ourselves in in the second chapter of life, after being first uh, being a, a green beret, or being a cop, being a first responder. We need to be able to find these uh, and it's not easy.
Speaker 2:Academia is not easy when you get older and you have a family I know I actually spent, before this call, five hours in a class, and I was yeah.
Speaker 3:They're making him do a prerequisite. He already has a master's in something else. They're making him do a prerequisite math class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a probability and statistics. It's been a rough six weeks.
Speaker 3:Take the wind out of the sails.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you that was a hard charge for me. I got my bachelor's and going through my statistics class and having to redo math like dude before I was a warrant, I was an 18 bravo. Let me tell you they gave me a supplemental math book for mortars and I am grateful they did, because I am dog shit at math. But yeah, you know what, whatever we have to do to get on the other side to be able to help, it's worth it. And I know you're going to crush it, man.
Speaker 1:I know you guys are going to continue to crush it, you guys if people want to get ahold of you or want to be, you know, become patients, where can they go?
Speaker 3:Brain treatment center ashburncom. You can find us on Facebook Facebook slash brain treatment center ashburncom. You can find us on facebook facebook slash brain treatment center ashburn. We're also on instagram, brain treatment center ashburn and linkedin. We have a second site that kind of deal details the other things that we're doing, and that's loudon integrativehealthpartnerscom. Um, and, we're there, yeah, find us, but and it's no cost out of pocket to any veteran who walks in the door, so hell yeah, guys, do me a favor.
Speaker 1:If you're listening, go ahead and pause. I'll wait, stand by, go to the episode description, click all those links, head on over to those websites. Do anything and everything you can to reach out to these folks, if anything just to say hi and commend them for what they're doing, because we need to support each other in the veteran space. And let me tell you a uh hey, how's it going? Thank you for what you're doing goes a long way these days because, fuck, it is a negative echo chamber out there.
Speaker 1:You ain't lying or how about this if you're interested in any of the things that's happening. Uh, one thing that I learned from my time in uh transition was ask for a virtual cup of coffee. Let me tell you if I could have found you guys early on, while I was going through my transition, it would have greatly helped me figure out my educational path. I figured it out in the end. But if we can shorten that timeframe by just having a cup of coffee virtually with somebody, why the hell not? Please be willing to reach out to Chris and Marcia and ask them how did you get involved? How did you start your journey? How did you figure out your passion? Look, we need more of you guys involved. We're not going to get out of here without you. So please, once you're done transitioning and you figured out that you don't want to be a YouTube star and you want to get involved in the mental health, reach out, ask for what schools to go to Recommendations. It's a small world. Once you realize that we can connect with each other. Again, guys, thank you so much for being here today. I greatly appreciate what you guys are doing and, to all y'all listening, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1:Please like, share, subscribe and throw this out to the world. Share it with your friends. If you're on Spotify, you can send me a text. Let me know what you didn't and I'll try to improve. Or probably not, because I make the show for me and I'm the only sponsor. I'm Danny Caballero. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you all next time. Till then, take care.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
