Full Transcript Introduction to Dr. Carr and Brain Health Research 0:00 Every football player, every athlete, and every person in collision type activities needs to have this in their locker. 0:12 Welcome back to the Think Well, Age Well podcast. 0:15 I'm your host, Dr. 0:16 Heather Sandison, and I am delighted to have the honor today of speaking with Dr Larry Carr. 0:21 He's a respected physiologist, educator and researcher whose work is helping to transform how we approach brain health, aging and recovery from brain injury 0:31 in particular. 0:32 Dr. 0:32 Carr currently serves as an adjunct professor at the Department of Neurology at The University of Utah, where he brings decades of experience in biomedical 0:41 research to some of today's most pressing challenges in brain health. 0:44 He's focused particularly on traumatic brain injury and its long-term consequences, especially among athletes, inspired by his personal experience as a 0:54 football player. 0:55 One of his most impactful collaborations to date has been with Brigham Young University's football team and athletic department, 1:02 where he's been partnering on research to better understand the effects and benefits of interventions when it comes to repeated head trauma and how we 1:11 can relate this to later in life decline and neurodegeneration. 1:16 Through his work, Dr. 1:17 Carr is helping to bridge the gap between science and real world solutions, advocating for prevention, early detection and compassionate care, 1:26 plus real outcomes. 1:28 Today, we have an exciting conversation to share with you about what he's learned from working with athletes, what's he learned form his own personal experience, 1:37 and what gives him hope for the future of Alzheimer's, CTE and dementia care. 1:42 His unique perspective is one that can't be missed. 1:45 Please join us. 1:46 Welcome Dr. 1:47 Carr. 1:47 Thank you. 1:48 Pleased to be here. 1:49 You've had a long and impactful career in this area, but you also have personal experience. 1:56 Would you start with just kind of sharing with us your personal experiences of being an athlete and experiencing head trauma of your own? 2:05 I started playing tackle football when I was 10 years old. 2:09 I played for the next 15 years through middle school, through high school college, and a couple of years professionally in the CFL. 2:27 The only one that did not play in the NFL, I played in a CFL. 2:31 So I was very productive, thousands and thousands of head hits that took a toll. 2:37 I mean, love the game, and love football. 2:39 It gave me a lot of identity, a lotta success, but I paid a big price. 2:45 About 10 years ago, was diagnosed with severe brain damage by a neurologist. 2:55 most probable cause was football and the head injuries from that probable CTE. 3:02 But that was preceded by years and years of a decline in health, both emotional and cognitive.
Personal History With Football and Head Trauma 3:11 My wife, bless her soul, paid a heavy price. 3:14 Obviously, I never was violent with her, but I had a lot of rage in me. 3:20 I was jealous, inconsistent, paranoid. 3:24 There were a really, really dark, dark times back then. 3:30 And that followed me until about 2018 where my wife and how we got through those next few years is difficult to say, but we did. 3:41 But we found ourselves in Boston for a short period of time, actually about a year and a half we were there. 3:47 Finding ourselves in Boston, I had done previously, some research on CTE because of my diagnosis and realized that Anne McKee was at Boston University 3:58 and was one of the major voices in CTA and in the diagnosis of and defining its characteristics and such. 4:06 We talk here a lot about dementia generally, but also about Alzheimer's. 4:09 So can you describe the characteristics of CTE, what it stands for, how it fits under the dementia umbrella? 4:16 CTe is chronic traumatic encephalopathy. 4:20 It is a relatively newly identified disease. 4:25 Most people have seen the movie Concussion with Dr. 4:28 Amalu who discovered it. 4:31 It's related to earlier the disease that boxers experienced for many, many years. 4:39 So they knew that it existed, but it's a relatively new, identified, separate form of dementia. 4:47 It is a neurodegenerative disease. 4:48 There's not Alzheimer's. 4:52 others, but Alzheimer's and a lot of the neurodegenerative diseases follow very similar patterns. 4:58 They have similar mechanisms and such. 5:02 So CTE is an ongoing disease. 5:06 There is no cure for it. 5:08 there's no absolute diagnosis for until after death. 5:12 But a lot of people have heard of it because of the suicides and major football players especially. 5:17 And that's what I probably have and will always have. 5:23 So, cephalopathy refers to swelling in the brain. 5:27 So there's some swelling of the brains that leads to changes in cognition, but there is also this particular characteristic of CTE that is behavioral change 5:37 that you alluded to, that were experiencing where there was more aggression, more rage, and sometimes violence, sometimes suicidality. 5:46 These are things that maybe people have heard some of these stories. 5:49 And also, we know that multiple brain injuries can also put us, even one brain injury, can put up at higher risk for developing many forms of dementia, 5:57 including Alzheimer's. 5:58 So it doesn't just mean that playing football leads to CTE, but there are multiple types of neurodegenerative courses that the brain can take when it's 6:09 had these types injuries. 6:10 Would you agree with that? 6:12 I agree with that. 6:13 As I said, I'm not a neuroscientist. 6:15 I can't give you a specifically full definition and the specific differences between the diseases, but they are neurodegenerative. 6:24 That means they're degenerative, they continue on. 6:27 And as of right now, there's no cure, although I've found some things that have really changed the course of my life. 6:35 Amazing. 6:35 Okay, I want to hear about that right away. 6:39 What changed the course of the disease for you? 6:41 And you know, even just my experience of chatting with you here today, you're very cognitively with it, of course, and you are still very engaged in research 6:51 and in your work. 6:52 So I'm sure a lot of people want know what is your secret, Dr. 6:55 Carr? 6:56 I found it about seven years ago, like I say, when we were in Boston. 7:00 My wife and I were there, Pacific assignment, we were living in a thousand square foot apartment, one car 24 seven. 7:11 My life actually was her her idea to go here to maybe. 7:15 helping my progression or my healing, so to speak. 7:20 But it wasn't working. 7:21 It was going downhill really fast. 7:23 And one evening, my wife came to me in tears saying, it's not supposed to be like this. 7:30 We've been married for 53 years right now. 7:33 At that time it was like 47 or 48 years. 7:36 and it just broke my heart. 7:38 I mean, I just, It's a disease that you know what you're doing. 7:43 There's a separation between your mind and your gut, the best way I can describe it. 7:50 You know that you're making someone unhappy. 7:53 I could even see fear in her eyes at times. 7:58 terrifying for me also. 8:00 So at that point in time, we had visited with Dr. 8:04 McKee earlier, several weeks earlier. 8:07 And after spending time with this, she said, you probably have this disease, but unfortunately, there's nothing that we can offer you. 8:15 We visit with family members, We study the brains, But there is really nothing we could do for you now. 8:21 just go and live your life. 8:23 And we left there pretty depressed, you know? 8:26 If I could live my life, I wouldn't have been visiting with her, right? 8:29 After that time, after that interaction with my wife, i sat down and I emailed Dr. 8:34 McKee again and i begged her in an email, is there anything, anything at all you could give me? 8:39 Because I just can't go on like this. 8:41 She responded and referred me to a 12th floor, small crowded office on the VA in Boston.
What CTE Is and How It Differs From Other Dementias 8:52 Dr. 8:52 Nazer was doing some research with using near infrared light, and she was using it with Gulf War vets who came back with suffering from Gulf war illness 9:03 and some brain injuries. 9:04 And she said that there was some pretty good success they were having. 9:08 So I visited with her, I understood the physiology as she went through the mechanisms that potentially were involved. 9:15 I had no other choices, so I said, sure, let's do this. 9:19 And so I started a six-week program of going to the hospital three days a week, having these big giant infrared lights put on my head. 9:29 They were hot, they were powerful. 9:32 But within about three weeks, my wife said she noticed some changes happening. 9:37 I wasn't quite as Angry I wasn't so easily upset things like that. 9:42 I didn't believe it I thought I was just imagining it it was a placebo or whatever But after six weeks I went back in for and we did the full testing ten 9:52 hours of neurocognitive testing scan data and such and I went back to and visited, went over our results and they were so excited. 10:01 They were jumping up and down basically. 10:04 I improved on every single test. 10:07 It was my PTSD was off the charts to start with. 10:11 That was down close to nil. 10:14 Depression was close nill. 10:16 My cognitive testing, my memory, and my executive function, all these tests, were really, really great. 10:24 My scan data was good. 10:26 It showed changes in functional connectivity that correlated with the changes and my cognitive neurocognitive testing. 10:33 Well, the next phase of the test was to go off it for six weeks and we were kind of scared because we got me coming back to where I used to be and now 10:43 I have to off of it. 10:45 So I went off it, and after six weeks, my wife noticed that I was going right back where I started from. 10:52 She was scared to death, but we went back in, got tested, And sure enough, My tests were right to point zero. 11:00 Sometimes not quite back to that point. 11:04 A couple of tests where worse than they were before, But it showed a very significant pattern. 11:09 Where they increased, they improved, They went right right down. 11:13 And so at this time, I started using an at-home device, which was the V-Lite early headset. 11:20 The changes weren't quite as quick, but they did start to come back. 11:25 And we went back in and got tested right before we left Boston. 11:30 Sure enough, the results were right back up. 11:32 I wish I had the graphs to show you, they were significant. 11:36 And it made a difference in my life at that point. 11:40 At that time, I loved the sport. 11:43 But I was really conflicted because not only did I love the sports, but it was a sport that almost brought me, caused me to not be here. 11:51 I mean, there's a lot of people that didn't make it. 11:54 Why I, why I able to make, it why was able survive that? 12:00 I don't know, certainly could have lost my marriage and lost So I was, Maya was committed to saving football. 12:07 You know, I mean, my wife looked at me and laughed at. 12:11 But, you know. 12:12 For a hundred years, football has known about head injury. 12:16 I. 12:19 It was boxing, it was concussions, whatever. 12:22 For a hundred years they've known about this and in the course of those hundred, what have they come up with? 12:27 Nothing. 12:28 They have no changes in their game, they try to change the rules, which are ineffective. 12:37 a $5 pad on the outside of a thousand dollar helmet, think that that's going to do anything at all, which I don't believe it does.
Near-Infrared Light Therapy Changes the Course 12:45 Studies have shown that it doesn't, but you see all the teams wearing these caps on top of their helmets. 12:52 And it has not changed the fact that the brain gets rattled in the head when you change acceleration or momentum. 13:01 So anyways, football needed something, and it still needs something. 13:07 They're slow to respond. 13:10 So I visited with the athletic director at BYU. 13:14 His response was, sounds too good to be true. 13:16 I said, you're right, it does sound that way, but here's my data, here is the thing. 13:21 And I've got 4,000 plus studies documented the biological changes that this causes. 13:29 You know, this is not just me by myself. 13:31 So he listened to me, but I knew at that point because I talked to other people and they'd pat me on the back and say, well, 13:38 I'm glad you found this. 13:39 I am glad it worked for you. 13:41 But you know everybody has something. 13:43 Everybody has a chiropractor or this supplement or that supplement that they quote, swear by. 13:49 so I know that I needed to validate this And so I got introduced to Dr. 13:55 Elizabeth Wilde, who's a department chair at the TBI and Concussion Center at University of Utah. 14:01 She's been doing this for 25 years. 14:03 she's one of the top neuroscientists in the world, hundreds of publications. 14:07 So she just transferred jobs from Baylor to the University Utah and she agreed to meet with me. 14:14 And, so, I talked to her and I've since found out that she was very interested in my results. 14:20 I showed it to But she had never heard of it. 14:23 And she actually thought it was kind of crazy. 14:27 But, she's a great person and she was willing to research it and look into it, and that started our journey. 14:35 That was about five years ago. 14:37 Since then, we've completed three research projects. 14:42 One with first responders, one with ex-football players, or actually ex athletes who were involved in many different collegiate sports. 14:50 and one on the 2021 BYU football team that actually had a control group in it. 14:57 And there's been some, many publications have come out of it, but we feel like we've found a truly a sea change in the way football needs to address brain injury. 15:12 A real paradigm shift in this, and it's kind of hard to get people to listen to us. 15:17 I'd love for you to talk us through the research and let's take them one at a time. 15:21 Would you start with the control trial with The University of Utah football players that you did in the 2021 season? 15:30 Take us though how you designed the study and then what the outcomes were. 15:34 Well, it's really a simple design. 15:36 We had a control group of 15 and an active group with 15. They were volunteers, the head coach. 15:43 To get a headcoach to agree to let you study their players is really significant. 15:49 They don't want to do that. 15:50 they don' like to allow outsiders into it. 15:53 Luckily, I wasn't an outsider. 15:55 I had played there. 15:57 And so I think that opened the door. 15:58 We had assured him that there would be no negative effects to this because of the research that had done up to that point. 16:06 with the benefits of this. 16:07 There'd been no negative side effects using this device, so he let us go at it. 16:13 And we tested them before the season and right after the seasons. 16:19 We looked at several emotional, cognitive, and performance measures, as well as did some very detailed scan data on them. 16:29 And the results were shock. 16:32 What was the intervention? 16:33 How often did they use the... 16:35 Oh, I'm sorry. 16:36 The intervention was to wear a V-Lite headset three days a week for 20 minutes. 16:42 They just did it in the training room, the trainer kind of oversaw it. 16:45 Compliance was very good. 16:48 The control group wore a headset that started but then turned off without their knowledge. 16:54 The treated group wear a head set that treated them the entire 20 minutes. 16:58 That was it. 16:59 They just had to wear that headset three days a week. 17:01 Probably, I would guess it would probably end up being closer to two and a half days week, but that was the protocol. 17:09 And through the entire season? 17:10 The entire football season. 17:11 During the whole season, yeah. 17:13 We did it after their last game, we tested them again. 17:16 The results are unbelievable. 17:18 And I say that because nobody would believe it if we didn't actually show them the scan data and the clinical data. 17:26 What we found was the clinical data, 10 different performance measures, cognitive measures emotional measures strength measures. 17:36 The treated group improved over the control group in 10 out of the 10 measures In many of them, they actually improve going from pre to post, 17:47 which if you know much about the sport of football, the goal of a strength and conditioning program is to minimize the loss. 17:57 You're going to lose strength, you're gonna lose focus, whatever it is. 18:01 But you try to minimise that so that they're still performing at a high level at the end of the season. 18:07 We found on several of these measures, they were actually better improved over the course of the season from the pre-testing. 18:15 And that's, that the treated group, the untreated group. 18:18 They did worse in every measure from start to the finish. 18:22 Wow. 18:23 Well, I mean that, laws there are significant in that that just doesn't happen to that level. 18:33 But still, people will say maybe it's biased, maybe they were incentivized or what have you. 18:39 The bottom line is the players that wore the headset were better players at the end of the season. 18:45 They were people, they better students, and just about everything. 18:51 Now the scan data, that's another thing altogether. 18:54 So we looked at the scanned data. 18:57 I'm not a radiologist, I am not an expert in this, but I can tell you that at end of the season, the untreated group, their brains were inundated with inflammation. 19:09 The inflammation, and this is DTI scanning, it's a relatively new technique. 19:14 But you could see it's color coded and you can see that the inflammation was identified throughout the entire brain. 19:22 The cerebellum, the cerebrum all throughout their brain, there was nothing but an inflammation in that. 19:28 There was also significant damage to the axons in the white matter. 19:33 The gray matter, the functional connectivity was kind of messed up in terms of, it was, It was like going down the road and running into a detour and having 19:42 to turn and go to another detours and going there. 19:45 Whereas now the treated group, that was a whole different story. 19:49 The treated had no new inflammation over the course of the whole season. 19:54 In fact, they had a net loss of inflammation from prior seasons. 19:58 Nothing has ever shown decreased inflammation over the course of a football season. 20:04 They had no damage to the axons, no repair mechanisms that had kicked in. 20:09 It showed nothing there. 20:11 So as far as connectivity, it was more like a normal brain and normal connectivity where there wasn't. 20:20 the delays in processing and such like that. 20:23 So I mean, we've got the data, We've the proof, the scan data. 20:29 I presented this to one strength scientist at a professional team, and he flat out said, I don't believe it. 20:38 You know, that's the case. 20:41 And I tried to tell him, do you really believe that these researchers would put out data risk their 25 years of credibility,
BYU Football Study and Season-Long Results 20:51 risked their jobs, risks everything that is sacred to them, that doing good research in order to impress you. 21:01 I mean, it just doesn't happen that way. 21:03 The data is the data. 21:05 And they went over it two, three, four times over the course of a full year, a year and a half, just looking at the date, 21:13 making sure that it was accurate, And the bottom line is we've got just from wearing this headset three days a week, a football player that's got a healthier 21:27 brain looking at the measures that we measure at end of the season than they did at beginning of season. 21:33 Now what the NFL, what NCA is doing is they're hoping to minimize the damage that occurs. 21:42 Because all the CTE research shows that the more years you play, it's cumulative. 21:48 The higher the risk is of getting the disease and the worse of it. 21:52 So it's an accumulated problem. 21:54 And we saw that in the untreated group where their inflammation, there was still residual inflammation before the season and it was inundated after the seasons. 22:05 The treated group, their information was non-existent. 22:10 One question on everybody's mind is how did they play? 22:12 How is their season? 22:15 Well, That's a really good question. 22:19 If you look at the head coach at BYU, he's been there 10 years. 22:24 And if you looked at all of the years, his win-loss record, taking out the two years that they used the light, because they also used a light last year. 22:33 Yeah, I was going to say I hope that the Head Coach decided to use that going forward. 22:39 His win loss record was, as I think, about 58%, which is okay. 22:45 It's not great. 22:47 It's not going to get you a long-term contract, I don't think. 22:51 So, but if you just take those two years that they use the light, their win-loss record is about 89%. I mean, the year we researched them, 23:02 they were I believe 10 and three. 23:05 Last year they 11 and two, and they we're just one play away from being in the national championship playoffs. 23:14 Now this is a team that had no draft choices. 23:19 They didn't have any first-team All-Americans. 23:21 They had great players, but not one of them was worthy of a draft pick. 23:29 And so you've got a team that is one the top teams in the country with no draft picks, 11-2, one play away from the national championship playoffs. 23:39 I can't say that that's due to wearing the light. 23:43 But I could say it certainly didn' hurt their performance. 23:47 And did you notice, or did the researchers pick out any athletes that had concussions? 23:55 I mean, we assume everybody's getting their head rattled if they're playing football for a season, but was there anybody that has a particular event, 24:03 loss of consciousness, a particularly bad head injury, who was in the treatment group where the results were maybe different from what would be expected? 24:13 I don't know exactly that, except that they did do a measure, a sideline measurement, in terms of concussion symptoms, and the symptom levels of the treated 24:23 group were much lower, significantly lower than the untreated group. 24:27 So, I mean, that's a good point. 24:30 Now, personally, i don' love looking at concussions, because I think it's misnomer, so to speak. 24:38 For the NFL use of concussions because they say well last year we had this many concussion this year, we have so many connections. 24:47 Concussion is just a point along that. 24:50 Spectrum of brain injury where we see. 24:54 Symptoms. 24:55 Okay. 24:56 What football player in the right mind, unless they were knocked out on the field is going to come off the and say, I think I have a concussion. 25:03 There's not anybody I played for a lot of years and there was a of times where I was knocked briefly. 25:09 I would be stunned. 25:11 Would have temporary amnesia or I wouldn't be able to call the signals. 25:16 And not once was I diagnosed with a concussion, because I never wanted to lose my position, I wanted never to be taken out of the game. 25:24 And that is the biasness in using concussions as a measure. 25:30 What coach really wants to say, hey, you look like you've got a concussion, come over here, let's take care of it. 25:37 Oh, by the way, he might be out for three weeks if we find something there. 25:42 It's just not going to happen. 25:43 If that was their main goal, there would be accelerometers in the helmets. 25:48 There would force plates. 25:53 concussion worthy hits. 25:55 And they don't have that. 25:57 Players aren't going to admit that they have concussions. 26:02 The diagnosis is very sketchy at best. 26:07 So I don't, I, don' believe whenever they look at statistics with this many concussions or that many. 26:13 I just, just kind of put it to the side and you can ask any football player. 26:18 They, they don''t admit to having concussion. 26:20 they didn't admit wanting to come out of the game. 26:24 It's, it's across the board. 26:26 As talking to one coach and telling him about this research and he said, well, yeah, but our concussions are down 25%. And I go, 26:35 well, okay. 26:38 The trouble is, concussions have no relationship to CTE. 26:42 So even though you think you're doing a good thing, which I give you credit for, it's not doing anything to lower the risk of CT. 26:51 Is there a clear way to detect when the cognitive issues are related to these repeated head traumas that maybe might not be classified as a concussion? 27:03 Just testing, just cognitive testing by experts and such. 27:09 They have different tests that they can give the players that have been developed. 27:14 I don't know how accurate they are. 27:16 And we're looking at kind of the long-term health benefits. 27:22 When you really look at the benefits, Of having the players use this light technology. 27:29 All of the other worries kind of go out the window. 27:32 Because if, if we prove through, we've got another FDA trial starting in another month or so. 27:40 But if if validate what we're already shown to be the case. 27:45 In my mind, we solved the brain injury problem for football. 27:49 That will bring a lot of other parents into the game, a lotta other kids into game. 27:55 I just feel that we're on that course. 27:58 And that's big news. 27:59 Yeah, that huge news! 28:01 You talked about some other applications as well, though. 28:04 You mentioned first responders and doing a study with them. 28:06 Can you speak to that, how the study was designed, what the intervention was, and then the outcomes? 28:13 Intervention was the same. 28:14 They wore the headset three days a week. 28:16 We didn't have any scan data with it. 28:19 It was just a pilot study. 28:20 And we looked at Las Vegas, a very active group of firefighters. 28:25 They wore it three days a week, like I said. 28:28 We didn't have any control groups. 28:30 Firefighters, they have a rough job. 28:32 A lot of PTSD, a lot divorce, lot suicide. 28:36 In fact, there's more suicides, deaths from suicide than there are from fires than firefighters. 28:42 So they don't sleep well. 28:44 I mean, you have lot stress in this job After the eight weeks, we tested them again and the main researchers did the testing. 28:52 There were no assistants doing the test. 28:55 But they had tremendous results, too. 28:58 What were the primary outcome measures? 29:01 Depression was decreased by about 20 percent. 29:04 PTSD was down about 30 percent, executive function improved, processing speed improved. 29:11 Every single measure that would improve their performance as a firefighter improved! 29:16 They wouldn't give the headsets back after the study. 29:19 They refused to return them. 29:22 And so, I mean, they responded a lot like everybody. 29:25 What do you mean this light is going to go through my head, my hair, or my scalp, and my skull? 29:32 Yeah, it does. 29:34 And we've got a lot of research. 29:35 VLite has done, they've done so much research in this area. 29:39 No other company, I don't get paid for selling Vlite. 29:43 I just help them with the research and they do a lotta research, so it's a very validated device. 29:49 It does do what we're saying it doesn't. 29:53 Can you describe, you're a physiologist, so describe a little bit of the mechanism and start with like, okay, what does it look like? 29:59 How do I put it on? 30:00 We've talked about wearing it for 20 minutes. 30:02 Is that normal? 30:03 how many days a week? 30:05 So if somebody's wanting to potentially use one of these, like what would that look for them? 30:10 Oh, great. 30:11 You're going to bust one out. 30:12 I love it. 30:12 There's a device. 30:15 And so this looks just about there. 30:18 This is the headset that goes on. 30:20 These two lenses go to the back. 30:23 They match up kind of with the cerebellum. 30:25 The front is on the front part of the head. 30:27 And these two lights on this side go on sides of head There's also a nose clip that go in the nasal cavity, which they've just released some data that
First Responder Pilot Study Outcomes 30:40 shows that the The light from the nose clip penetrates down deep into the skull, into brain down here, and it's very effective. 30:50 So they just wore this headset for 20 minutes, three days a week, And they had tremendous results. 30:58 Do they meditate while they're doing it? 30:59 Can they talk while doing this? 31:02 They can do whatever they want. 31:03 You can cook dinner while you're wearing it, you can watch TV while wearing that, You could be doing anything at the same time. 31:08 Okay, interesting. 31:10 Now some of the research that we're looking at doing is to match this along with some more traditional therapies to see if it's synergistic with those, 31:18 if that accelerates more tradition therapies. 31:22 But you know, I've done this a long time When I was first out of college, I did a lot of work with cardiac rehab. 31:30 And these are people that are fighting for their life. 31:32 That had a heart attack, that almost took their lives. 31:35 They have some significant lifestyle changes that they're trying to make. 31:39 Diet, exercise, the whole bit. 31:41 You want to lose weight. 31:43 There were great for the first few weeks, but after that, they just fell off the wagon. 31:48 Making lifestyle change is really, really hard. 31:52 I agree with that. 31:53 It's next to impossible. 31:56 With this, you don't have to make any lifestyle change. 31:58 You put it on your head in the morning and you go about your day. 32:02 As far as the effectiveness of this it's unmatched. 32:07 It's easy to use. 32:09 you can take it anywhere. 32:11 There's a lot of beds out there. 32:13 there's other things that delivers lights and there is nothing that it can compare because there are a lots of barriers to its use Not the headset you 32:23 can take that with you anywhere So, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm doing a commercial but when you get the results that we found What's the percentage 32:31 of people that have mental health issues out there? 32:33 You know it's huge what 50%? We're talking about millions and millions of I was interested in football because of my own path my Own experience going down 32:45 the dark path black hole. 32:46 And it's a really good petri dish to experiment with. 32:51 You've got these young, healthy people that exercise a lot. 32:55 They try to take care of their bodies. 32:57 But the only thing wrong with them is they beat their heads. 33:00 So we can kind of isolate the brain damage associated with what they do on the field. 33:06 If this can mitigate that damage and have the success that it has had, that's huge. 33:13 It's Well, yeah, and imagine what it could do if you wore it five days a week, because we found that five day a day is better than three days. 33:23 And imagine if they started wearing it when they first started tackle football when their 10 years old and wear it year after year. 33:32 I've worn it for seven years now. 33:35 My wife tells me she's got her old husband back, he's better then ever. 33:38 But I feel like I got my mind back. 33:42 So a couple questions. 33:44 One, is there any risk? 33:45 Is there a potential downside? 33:47 Can you overdo it? 33:48 What if you did it seven days a week or twice a day? 33:51 Could you be getting too much stimulation through the red light? 33:54 And what is the physiology or at least the hypothesis? 33:58 Like, what's going on? 33:59 How does the light work? 34:02 Well, it works several ways. 34:04 To answer your question about too much, you can get too. 34:08 I don't know if you could get to much from a headset like this. 34:10 The power is adjusted so that it minimizes that risk. 34:15 It's effective and they're high quality lights, not all light is equaled. 34:20 In Amazon they have red lights and there's a lot of difference in the quality of the lights. 34:25 There is a biphasic response though that you could get too much light if you use real powerful lights.
How the Headset Works and Why It May Help 34:31 And that just, it stops working. 34:33 There's no real negatives in terms of health issues. 34:38 We've not found anything that is negative. 34:41 there's been a few people that have claimed to have headaches. 34:43 It's really minimal. 34:49 There's a center for PBM back east, and they've documented- PPM photobiomodulation, just very- Yeah, TPBM is transcranial photobio-modulation. 35:03 They've document over 100 million hours of use of this without any serious negative effects. 35:13 I cannot say and I won't say that this is effective for everybody. 35:18 but we have had a really strong success rate. 35:22 And when it is successful, it's usually successful. 35:25 Statistically successful we've got several papers that are going to be that have either been published, submitted for publication, 35:33 being under review, that will be coming out very shortly. 35:38 When that happens, I mean I expect when the football study is published that people are going to take notice because this is huge. 35:47 Can you imagine what the NFL would do with this data if they understood it? 35:51 I mean, headlines, football, brain issues solved. 35:56 Well, it sounds like you're going to make that happen. 35:59 So the physiology. 36:00 You're a physiologist. 36:02 What is happening? 36:03 My understanding is Michael Hamblin, he was at Harvard for a while. 36:06 He's published extensively on this. 36:08 There's also Russian data. 36:10 Of course, has to be translated a little bit easier these days with AI. 36:14 But my understanding, is that the cytochrome C oxygenase enzyme in the mitochondria does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of using the light to optimize 36:25 how we turn glucose into ATP. 36:28 Is that your understanding of it? 36:29 Is there more to it than that? 36:31 Well, Michael Hamlin was an author on my study. 36:36 He was part of the group in Boston that published my results. 36:42 I was a part three additional NFL players that had very similar results, so that was the first study on football players. 36:52 But what you're talking about is within the mitochondria. 36:55 And in the mitochondria, that's kind of like what they call the powerhouse of the cell. 37:00 That's what creates the ATP, which is the energy that drives muscle contraction and enzymes and all the chemical reactions that take place. 37:10 It seems that there is some effects on the cytochrome C oxidase level within that system that transfers electrons, the electron transport system, 37:22 through that that creates the ATP. 37:25 They look at blood flow, seems to be improved, they look the nitric oxide that seems be part of this, which affects bloodflow. 37:35 The improvement in the mitochondria, there's a lot of mitochondrion in blood which gets affected, radiated by the The nose clip. 37:44 So I read an article in the MIT research journal several years ago where they had identified light channels within the brain. 37:57 Channels that actually transport the photons. 38:01 And so I haven't seen a lot of work thereafter. 38:04 It was very advanced work and kind of woo-woo kind work, people thought. 38:11 But, you know, we can't describe. 38:14 the reaction time and the movement of muscles and that performance in people just by the electrical impulses from the brain to the muscle. 38:25 The time doesn't match really. 38:28 And so what happens in the bring with light and photons and such, We'll figure it out. 38:34 Somebody will figure that out, but all I know now is that for whatever reason, whatever mechanism, light works. 38:42 The FDA just approved the use of light, PBM, for macular degeneration. 38:48 They use it in cancer sores with cancer patients that end up with soreness in their mouth. 38:55 That's a go-to treatment. 38:59 They've known that near-infrared light has biological benefits for many years, 40 years. 39:09 And yet people still don't know anything about it. 39:13 I would guess that if you asked 100 people about PBM-99, would never have heard of it before. 39:19 Yet it's one of the most studied, most researched, technology that's out there. 39:28 At no risk, there's no side effects, no drug overdoses, nothing out. 39:36 I beat my head against the wall trying to get people to listen, but it'll happen. 39:41 People will see this and it will explode. 39:44 And that's exactly why we're here, Dr. 39:46 Carr, is to have this conversation so that more people can learn about this potentially beneficial intervention that has very low risk. 39:56 As a clinician, this really stands out to me when I can recommend something that is cost effective, that doesn't take a lot. 40:04 As you mentioned, it's very easy. 40:05 It's easier to put this light on your head for 20 minutes a day than it is to cook differently or exercise differently, or change your social network. 40:20 And so it's low risk, cost effective, easy to use, and there is really good data coming from multiple sources. 40:28 I was so excited when Dr. 40:31 Lu Lim and the group up at V-Light was telling me about you, because I think when you take a cohort of study subjects who have repeated trauma, 40:41 brain trauma and then you can show this really distinct, significant difference in those who were treated versus untreated, 40:48 it speaks volumes about what the intervention is doing. 40:52 And even if we don't understand exactly the details, when we can see the differences in these two groups, it really shows us that there's some promise here, 41:00 and it's probably worth adopting for a lot of people listening to help optimize cognitive function as they age, regardless of traumatic brain injury, 41:08 history, or not. 41:10 Absolutely. 41:11 My wife uses it. 41:13 She has a history of Alzheimer's in her family. 41:17 I played football quite a while ago, but I'm not that old, you know? 41:21 I lost one defensive end from suicide. 41:25 I've lost another defensive and he was entered into a care facility, died of dementia. 41:34 One, a little younger than I am, has been multiple divorces and is living in his car right now, very bright guy. 41:42 I can go through a group of 15 players that I played with and coaches involved and see that this affected 10 or 12 of them. 41:53 And even the ones that tell you that I'm fine, if you really dig down deep into their situation, there's a lot of unhappiness. 42:02 There's lot stress. 42:03 A lot anxiety. 42:04 Lot of divorce out there. 42:06 I mean, people that played this game, that really played any kind of collision sport, are not their best selves. 42:14 As good as they are, they're not their best selves. 42:18 And I try to make people realize this, that that's a situation that we're dealing with. 42:24 Did you work as a physiologist? 42:26 And what was your work there? 42:28 I worked as an exercise physiologists and physiologists at a university for eight years. 42:33 After that, I started my own business. 42:38 I was so compromised. 42:41 I went downhill so far in my cognitive and emotional status, which I didn't have any idea what was causing this, that I ended up teaching middle school 42:50 PE for 15 years before I found this in Boston. 42:55 It's not as exciting as an NIH researcher, but it's more realistic. 43:01 When I said people are not their best selves, they're not the best self. 43:05 What advice do you have for clinicians or families who are concerned about having had a history of head trauma and who might be at risk for developing 43:16 long-term CTE or Alzheimer's, or even just as you described, like not living their best lives? 43:22 What would you tell them to do? 43:24 Get a headset. 43:25 Simple as that. 43:26 Nothing more than that." I mean, before the effects that I found of this, every researcher, Every clinician would say the same thing. 43:37 Eat better. 43:37 Exercise. 43:39 Get more sleep. 43:40 See a therapist. 43:41 You know, go on and on about these things that don't have I don't want to say they don' have an effect, but I did exercise.
Broader Implications for Athletes and Families 43:49 I was a physiologist, I ate right. 43:52 Meditated, was spiritual. 43:56 Did everything that I supposed to do and I just kept going downhill, downhill and downhill. 44:01 Until the point where I held a knife to my chest for over an hour and wanted to end my life. 44:06 You know, it just doesn't help. 44:09 This is the only thing that I've found that has helped. 44:12 And I got it validated by many, many individuals, by highly respected researchers that have validated this and published papers based on this. 44:24 So people will hear about this, It's just a matter of time. 44:29 It's so exciting. 44:29 This is a really exciting time. 44:32 I have told people if you are APOE 4, 4 positive, I wouldn't recommend that you play football. 44:37 Uh, wouldn recommend you become a big wave surfer or take on jobs like firefighting or ER nurses or doctors because of the impacts on your brain and how 44:47 susceptible you It sounds to me like you've really made it part of your life's work to make football safe again, so that we can say, 44:56 even if you have some risks, you can still enjoy the game. 45:00 Absolutely. 45:01 And did you ever see the movie Concussion with Will Smith? 45:04 I haven't seen it yet. 45:06 Oh, you need to see that. 45:07 But there's a part in there where one of the doctors, they're trying to squash this research. 45:12 And he works for the NFL and he made the statement, if 10% of football moms out there believe this, that's the end of Well, 45:21 10% of moms did believe it and more, and they did take their kids out, but it wasn't the end of football. 45:29 In fact, there's probably been less talk about it these last several years, probably because of the NIL and the money that's involved. 45:37 and the wild west nature of college football, even high school athletes are getting pillied nowadays. 45:43 Brain injury, CTE, the whole thing has kind of taken a back seat and that's too bad, you know, before I found this. 45:52 It was really hard to justify supporting football. 45:55 I mean, you're basically telling your son to go out there, play this game, and, oh yeah, it's like playing Russian roulette. 46:03 Maybe it is one bullet, two bullets, whatever, but it certainly increases their risk of not living their best self and possibly dying early. 46:12 Well, I mean, when you described it, it's worse than roulette, right? 46:15 This isn't a 50-50 chance. 46:16 This is you are sacrificing your brain and body when go out and play this game. 46:22 You know, one thing we found in the scan data of the football players, and we scanned nine women soccer players. 46:31 But that was during COVID, so we couldn't finish that study. 46:35 But what we found, their brains looked really bad. 46:38 And in retired football players that have symptoms of CTE, 92% of them have what's called a CSP, a cavum septum pollucidum, 46:53 in their brain. 46:53 It's right in the middle of their And it's not normal, it is not common. 46:59 Different researchers look at it as maybe 2% to 20% in the normal population, but in football players it was 90%. In Boston, 47:10 Dr. 47:10 McKee suggests that presence of a CSP is a major risk factor for developing CTE. 47:19 We found a CSP present in 95% of the football players. 47:25 These are 21-year-olds that have the same red flag blaring warning, warning warning that these retired football But what else we found? 47:37 We found that that CSP was present in nine out of the nine women's soccer players. 47:43 So every one of them had the same artifact in their brain. 47:48 And we don't know what the clinical significance of it is. 47:53 But I believe what we feel is it's the result of the brain twisting and turning and banging around in there and that's end result. 48:04 So I don't know if the presence of that in and of itself is the reason why there's problems and it has been associated with severe mental diseases, 48:14 mental disorders too. 48:16 But it's a red flag. 48:17 I mean, extended period of time playing tackle football, starting at a young age and the presence of a CSP, there you've got three major risk factors for 48:28 developing CTE. 48:30 So without some kind of intervention, pads on your helmet, changing the rules is not going to do anything. 48:38 You have to treat it. 48:39 And this is the only way I know that you can treat effectively. 48:44 Well, what an exciting time. 48:45 You know, we talk about in our work, my colleagues and I, that hopefully for my generation, I'm in my 40s, Alzheimer's can be optional. 48:52 And it sounds like your work is really, can we make CTE optional for football players and for soccer players, and anybody who enjoys sports that include 49:03 getting repeated head injuries? 49:04 That this is a way to... 49:05 We've talked about millions and millions of people, And if it has an effect on mental illness, another group of millions people. 49:13 Look at firefighters, law enforcement, military. 49:16 I mean, we've had several military vets in this, and significant results with them. 49:23 So, I think this is a must-have. 49:28 Every football player, every athlete, everyone in collision-type activities needs to have this in their locker. 49:37 And even motor vehicle accidents, right? 49:39 Following a... 49:40 We've had several that we've treated with that. 49:43 Michael Hamblin, you mentioned him, kind of the godfather of PDM. 49:47 He wrote one time in his book, he said, this is a performance enhancement device that cannot be detected. 49:55 You know, it is, takes performance to the next level in my mind as an exercise physiologist. 50:04 How exciting. 50:04 Dr. 50:05 Carr, it has been such a wonderful conversation with you. 50:08 So eye-opening, so brain-expansive and mind-blowing. 50:12 Thank you for sharing both your vulnerability, your personal experience, as well as your professional experience and your enthusiasm, 50:20 really your dedication, you devotion to the sport and the players. 50:24 It's been a pleasure to talk to you and to have you on the show. 50:27 Well, thank you, It has my pleasure be here. 50:30 Thank you so much for listening to the Think Well, Age Well podcast. 50:35 If you enjoyed today's conversation, please take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you care about. 50:43 It's one of the best ways to help others discover tools and inspiration for aging well. 50:50 To stay connected, get bonus resources, and never miss an episode, head over to drheathersanderson.com and join my email list. 51:00 Until next time, keep thinking well and aging on purpose.
Comments