Unraveling The Influence Of Genes On Your Health

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Welcome. I am Dr. Ken Sharlin, and you are listening to the Parkinson’s Solutions Summit. Today, I have a very special guest, Dr. Mark Gordon. I have known Dr. Gordon for several years. He is very involved with the Age Management Medical Group, and that is where we met, an organization that teaches doctors who want to think outside the box about why we get sick and how we can get better. 

He has a big toolbox, and he has done some amazing work. I did not want to take anything. I want him to tell you about it, but I will tell you about his work with veterans in particular and anyone with a traumatic brain injury. They need to know about it, and you need to know about Dr. Gordon. Without further ado, Dr. Mark Gordon, welcome to the Parkinson Solutions Summit.

Mark Gordon, MD

Thank you. It is always an honor to be able to share the science and the experience that I have had over the past—well, 18 years in traumatic brain injury, and 42 years practicing medicine. That brings us back to 42 years ago when I started in family practice internal medicine, and I had a phenomenal endocrinology professor here who took me under his wing. I found this incredible area of brain chemistry, hormones, and so forth. I left my residency, started doing traditional family medicine, and found that the traditional approach did not do much. When I started delving into the area of hormones, it came into play, which impacted my life because, in the late 90s, I started developing depression for some reason. I am a reader, and my escape was reading, I found that there was a relationship between hormone deficiencies and psychiatric or psychological issues. 

I had had six head traumas before that. There was no loss of consciousness, but six significant head injuries. I got my blood run, and I found that I was deficient in growth hormone to size from and thyroid back in the 90s. Within 90 days of getting started on it, man, life changed. I started looking at my patient population and realized that a lot of the football players that I started dealing with in 1995 ended up doing to ESPN Outside the Lines in 2006 and 2007, where I got to apply the science of my own life experience to those with football who were experiencing what they call CTE, depression, anxiety, bipolar, and all those things, emotional volatility. The literature was lagging what we were experiencing in practice. Then articles started to appear about the relationship between hormonal deficiency and the onset of psychiatric conditions. 

Then you started finding that the traumas were creating inflammation that was leading to degenerative conditions, which led us to things like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, ALS, MS, and so forth. In 2004, I left my old, old practice and moved to a new one, which I set up in 2000 to 2001, but I did not officially get started until 2000–2004 dealing in the area of neuroendocrinology. Neuron chronology deals with the brain and its hormones how they are, and how they influence our neurology, and it is subsequently found that there’s also the immune system that plays this incredible role with trauma neuroendocrinology, neurology, and so forth. That is where I have been spending most of my time. 

In 2009, I left, or 27 years ago, the NFL and started focusing strictly on the military. Well, focusing on the military still getting civilians and finding that everyone that had a traumatic injury, whether or not there was loss of consciousness or not, developed an inflammatory may or condition in the brain, and that inflammation ended up shutting down the hormones that are, we think of testosterone, it is from progesterone, and all those sex hormones, as well as reproductive hormones, as gender hormones. It turns out they have multiple levels of benefit in our system. We use the term pleiotropic, which means that there are many effects of these hormones. 

One of the effects, if we look at something Alzheimer’s, is to help remove the Alzheimer’s protein, the amyloid beta, out of the brain with Neprilysin and through stimulation of testosterone estradiol pregnilium and there were just a whole bunch of benefits to these hormones that we took for granted, thinking that, They were just to have sex or just have babies and so forth, but a lot more. Then one of my colleagues brought his father to me, 81-year-old Alan, who was having Parkinson’s. One of the major problems that he was having was nocturnal paralysis. He was not able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. He is soiling himself every night. 

We brought him in, and we ran our traumatic brain injury parameters on him. Lo and behold, there were hormonal deficiencies in the markers that suggest that he had deficiencies in the brain. What we did was replenish it. Within 90 days, he is given that he is no longer having problems swelling himself. He can get up. His Parkinson’s is improving, and he is in the gym with his son, Richard, three times a week working out. Now that his tremors have improved, his pill-rolling is gone. His shuffling of feet is gone. He can do activities in the gym. 

For a woman who flies in from Sweden with moderate, mild to moderate Parkinson’s on three medications, we ran the same tests. We found a pattern that was suggestive of inflammation and hormonal deficiency, and we treated her, within 90 days she was 70% better. With COVID, unfortunately, she got stuck in Sweden, and she was unable to get some of our treatment. But she did very well because if you drop the inflammation, that creates the scenario for damage to the special neurons that produce dopamine in the substantia nigra. There are four areas of the brain where dopamine is made. 

The one we focus on is substantia nigra. But what we found, and I know you are aware of this, is that through trauma, whether or not it is physical trauma or environmental trauma, we talked about burn pits, we talked about certain medications, and we talked about chronic stress. All these things, in addition to the physical trauma of being hit on the head—a blast, an IED, car accidents, slips and falls, whatever—all induce inflammation. Inflammation often gets free radicals, and the free radicals mix with nitric oxide to create a very caustic chemical called peroxide nitro and peroxide nitrate, which, for some reason, selectively goes after glutathione in the substantia nigra. 

For those people out there, glutathione is an anti-inflammatory free radical-scavenging amino acid or a complex of three amino acids that helps as a frontline defense against trauma or inflammation. It gets used up rapidly because this proxy nitrate is so caustic to the system, which leads to damage to the production of dopamine, and therefore you end up getting things like Parkinson’s. In addition, this proxy nitrate inhibitor sets the area of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is the control center for the pituitary. That tells the pituitary, Hey, make TSH for the thyroid, and make LH for luteinizing hormone to stimulate testosterone. It turns out that the supportive cells in the brain, or glia astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglial cells, are cofactors in the hypothalamic production of the hormone that triggers the production of testosterone through the pituitary gland and hormone. 

It turns out that if there is inflammation, these cells, the astrocytes, cannot communicate with the area the control sent to the hypothalamus to produce the hormone, the signal gonadotropin-releasing hormone that tells luteinizing I want to turn on. What happens is that you lose the production of testosterone, estradiol, and all the hormones that follow, bringing along progesterone and our prenatal cortisone. If you lose these in production and that leads to a deficiency state throughout the body, well, it turns out estradiol in both females and males is extremely important for reducing inflammation through a system. We call it MAP3K, which is an inflammatory pathway, or MAP3K, and this helps to diminish inflammation, and that is what helps stop the production of proxy nitrite. Also the estrogen and the testosterone. 

Testosterone is specifically an incredible stimulator of the immune system to make the anti-inflammatory product called IL-10, or interleukin-10. That will help reduce inflammation. It also drops four key pro-inflammatory chemicals or immune-produced immune cells. The microglia produced interleukin one, 1b6, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha, which led to the damage. All these parameters and all these factors working concurrently lead to damage. How do you reverse it? You fix the damage and inflammation and replenish the hormones that are deficient by the process of inflammation. 

When we did our 28-point biomarker panel, it took me about 14 years to put this together. What it does is show us, both directly and indirectly, problems with inflammation affecting hormonal production in the brain. In the brain, we call the hormones neurosteroids because they are made in the brain. Testosterone is made in the brain. It was only in 1986, with a doctor out of Paris, France, that he found the enzymes that allow cholesterol to be converted to each one of the hormones that we call cycle hormones or that are produced from cholesterol. That is why cholesterol is so important in the brain. Using drugs that drop cholesterol levels down to low levels will end up creating a problem. 

Now, I know about that problem firsthand because my mother died of statin dementia, where she was put on a statin drug that ran her cholesterol down as low as it could be and deprived her brain of the precursor, the foundational chemistry to build all the hormones that protect the brain. One of the side effects is dementia. While she had it, it was not Alzheimer’s and it was not any of the other frontal lobe dementias; it was a mild form. It took her ten years to finally succumb to it. However, her neurologist witnessed that when I treated her with our protocol, she got better. The only problem is that I had siblings who did not understand and had control over her case and rejected what I was doing, and she rapidly decayed and died. It is one of those things.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, Dr. Gordon, I wonder if I could maybe just briefly summarize to make sure I understand exactly what you are saying. First of all, hormones are produced by glands throughout the body, and according to their definition, which we learned very early on in medical school, un-neurotransmitters, which are produced by one nerve cell and received by another nerve cell that is very close to one another with micrometers of space in between, travel throughout the body and affect multiple tissues. While we think of these sex hormones as being part of the reproductive process, which they are, they also play critical roles throughout the body. We are focusing especially on the brain. 

It stands to reason that these hormones will be important throughout our lives, not just for a woman up to the time of menopause. Although men do not technically have menopause, it is very common for these levels to go down as men get older for a whole variety of menopause. 

Mark Gordon, MD

Menopause or a pause. 

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Then we have a second step here, which is all of these hints, if you will, to our system, head injuries, and other types of jarring experiences, whether you are in a blast as a deployed soldier, a blast injury, or a car injury, or heading a soccer ball, where maybe it is just you have been exposed to toxins or other things that turn on the body’s stress response system, which is a normal biological system. It is supposed to be there. It is not by accident. It protects us, but it shouldn’t get jammed in the on position. When that happens, if I understand you correctly, the feedback loop says do not make hormones survive, be in, but the problem with do not make hormones or decrease levels is that then we start to lack what the brain needs to grow and repair itself. Is that fair?

Mark Gordon, MD

That is correct. Also, to be very clear, there are two areas of hormone production. There are neural steroids in the brain, and then there are neural active steroids that are made in the glands below the neck. Unfortunately, the majority of the hormones made below the neck do not get into the brain. The brain has to make its own. You can have problems below the neck. But the real issue is what happens in the brain—the inflammation that shuts down the ability of our brain to do all the signaling—to make the hormones or to generate the signal below the neck. Yes, it is absolutely

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Also published well in the peer-reviewed literature is that, just from a purely epidemiological or observational viewpoint, a major risk factor for the onset of Alzheimer’s disease is a decrease in testosterone before the symptoms begin. It plays a major role in triggering this disease. Then you have a system where we can look not only at hormone levels. By the way, can I just ask you your opinion on this? I often get asked, Why aren’t doctors checking this stuff? Either you and I check this out, but why do you think that when a patient with Parkinson’s comes in to see the neurologist, why aren’t they getting their hormones checked? Why are they not getting their inflammatory markers checked?

Mark Gordon, MD

It is a great question, Ken. I think the issue is they are not being trained or there is no desire to be trained in functional medicine because I think in functional medicine, we get a greater understanding of the functionality of our system as opposed to the holistic functionality of the system as opposed to just the little part. You are only looking at a little part. That little part is what we were trained in relative to Parkinson’s disease, amantadine, L-dopa software, and so on. I think it is just an educational issue to some degree. I think it is training culture. There is a culture of the medical community in the South. It is probably the last thing they do is check hormones, more so on the western East Coast, New York, California, and Chicago. There is a little bit more in Florida. 

There is more delving into a greater depth of functionality or functional medicine. Other than that, I do not guess what to offer you in terms of why it happens. It is a shame because, as you and I both have experienced and learned and know how important these hormones are, there is a professor at USC. I used to be a clinical professor at USC who wrote a book about neural hormones being the cause of why we die. If we do not have the hormones in our brain, it cannot sustain a natural and normal functioning brain. What happens is that systems shut down. It is important to have the brain well preserved in all its chemistry.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, Dr. Mark Gordon, you have said then that you go into your evaluation phase and you have a system to look at markers of inflammation and hormones. You have mentioned, I think, a couple of interleukins. Can you tell me more about how that all works? How do you approach things clinically? Then it is if I come and see you.

Mark Gordon, MD

Yes. The first thing we do is run a 28-point biomarker panel, and the biomarker panel has zero inflammatory markers in it. It has zero inflammatory markers. Why is that? If we were to run the interleukin, which are the immune system-produced markers indicating that there is inflammation, the interleukin 1a, 1b,  tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin six, where are they coming from if we do a blood test on them? When you get a measurement of it, where is it coming from? Is it coming from my left knee pain? Is it coming from my elbow? Is it coming from my neck, or is it coming? Solely from the brain? That is the problem with running these tests. 

We did a study about two years ago on our veterans, and it is their expensive tests, which our company pays for. What we found is that if the interleukin levels were elevated, we did our interleukin six and moved across Sector Alpha to keep costs down to $600 for two tests for paired tests. It is four tests in total. What we have found is that the levels of interleukin-6 and tumor growth factor alpha were elevated, and then we treated them, and the levels were lower. When we did the follow-up test, 90 days later, their symptoms were better, but I could not tell you where those interleukins came from because there’s nothing that says I am from the brain, I am from the muscle, I am from the body, I am below the neck, and so forth. using them to predict lives. It is impossible. They are elevated. Therefore, that is the reason for you. I do not know where it is coming from. 

Yes, we do a complete orthopedics survey to make sure if there is a musculoskeletal or gut-related issue because one of the things that is frequently overlooked is that you can have the initiation of inflammation of the brain coming from a peripheral source. If you have an ulcer or dysbiosis, a leaky gut syndrome, or a fracture of a bone, they all generate peripheral interleukins, or cytokines, which are what they are. They go immediately into the brain and pass the baby because they destroy the motor sites on the astrocytes that protect the glial cells that protect the blood-brain barrier. You get it immediately; it gets into the brain. What does it do? Triggers the immune cells, the microglia, in the brain. It turns the money that activates them from inactive M0 to M1 activated, and they start dumping inflammation. 

This brings us to why people who have no trauma, no burn pits, nothing but environment mental stress, stress in the family, stress at work, stress wherever. Why is it that they develop the same kinds of symptoms as one of our veterans who has been exposed to blast trauma? The reason for that is because eight or nine years ago we recognized another chemical chemokine that’s produced by neurons, which is called fractalkine, which keeps the fractalkine and keeps the microglia, the immune cells of the brain. It keeps them calm in the M0 state, which means they are calm; they are just surveying the area, looking for bacteria, mold, fungus, viruses, and debris from trauma, to help start the process of cleaning it up. Fractalkine is what keeps them at rest. Under stress, cortisol rises; cortisol causes the neuron, the nerve cell, to stop making fractalkine. When you stop making fractalkine, the glial cells wake up. They activate from quiet M0 to activated M1 and start dumping inflammatory cytokines. 

This is why we have people who have developed what they call PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. There is no trauma. It is just purely stressful for you to truly have what they call PTSD, which I do not believe in. You have to have no physical trauma. But it is interesting that Dr. Daniel Pearl, out of Washington, is a neuropathologist who specializes in looking at people with blast injuries and PTSD and has done 20,000 brain biopsies. He found that in every single one of the veterans who were diagnosed and died with the diagnosis of PTSD, there was a physical structural alteration in the brain. He made the statement, which was a hallelujah statement, which is: How can you have a purely psychiatric illness create a physical finding? How can you have in psychiatry create a physical that creates symptoms? It is the disruption of the brain’s tissue that leads to this process. 

We see the same lesions in CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which occurs in our sportspeople, whether or not they are boxers or football players. I worked from 95 until 27 with football, with my daughters taking care of them. I deal with Brotherhood, which is an organization that helps boxers after they have completed their work in the boxing industry. They develop significant problems afterward. Our job is to intervene early to sidestep the symptoms while everything is caused by this inflammatory process that is initiated by the trauma we call neurotrauma. They get punched, they get hit on the head, and they get a job to get a head hit on the head. That will initiate the inflammatory process. There are a couple of articles that talk about cellular transduction. That is a big term. All it means is that cell stems sitting next to each other, that when they are vibrated, let us say, by a slip and fall, or if you are on a horse or your skidoo or you are on skis or you are snow skiing or water skiing, that repetitive bouncing causes the nerves, the cells, to hit together. That induces the onset of inflammation because it creates stress in the brain. That is neuro transduction. A beautiful article, and a little over my head, since I am not a neurologist, it’ll be easy for you to read, Doc.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, you have brought up the important point that the stress—environmental stress, as you called it—is a blow to your word, transduced into a biological change in the brain. I think when you said, if I understood you correctly, when you said, PTSD to say, we grew up in, we were trained in medical school and residency where they talk about things that are organic versus not organic. As if to say things that are of the mind of the spirit of the personality and thoughts somehow do not have a biological basis. 

But I think what you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that, No, these cannot be separated. When we talk about things like PTSD, which most certainly exists, it is because it has a biological physical substrate that has profound effects. On a macro level, we can see brain atrophy in the hyper hippocampal region of the brain on the cellular level and at the subcellular level on the epigenetic level. Of course, with all of these signaling molecules, Brett is talking about

Mark Gordon, MD

Absolutely. You rephrased my stuff beautifully well, Doc. That is great. Yes.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Yes, I do these. I stopped doing them because I love veterans, by the way. I have to tell you that my training was primarily at Emory and Vanderbilt. Both of those institutions have VA hospitals on campus. I feel I owe a lot of my life and my career to the veterans, not just because they served our country but also because of their willingness to put up with young students and residents like myself and allow us to learn how to be doctors. I feel forever indebted to the veterans, and I was approached by a company that contracts with the Veterans Administration to do TBI evaluations on veterans. I said, Of course, I will do that. 

Then I found out that what it was about was that the veterans are entitled to a certain amount of compensation for injuries and illnesses that they sustained during their time of service, which they are. But what I was being asked to do in many cases was to listen to the veteran’s story and go through a lot of checkboxes to inform them that the VA has, but ultimately to tell them what their symptoms are due to traumatic brain injury. Or is this post-traumatic stress syndrome, or is it impossible in some cases to tell the difference? That’s where I will tell you. I struggled because it is as if to say there are separate things when you and I know they are not separate things.

Mark Gordon, MD

I published a paper three months ago, which is that it was based on a lecture I gave to the Department of Health and Human Services on PTSD, TBI, or TBI, PTSD. It was a subtle way that I could help the attendees understand that PTSD, what they call PTSD number one, is a misnomer because there is that physical component you just reiterated that is ignored. I spoke to the head of one of the DOD departments that deals with PTSD and TBI, and I asked them to tell me everything about Frank Culkin. They said, they know nothing about Frank Culkin, which tells me that they do not have a fuller understanding that the reason why this scenario of PTSD develops is because of Frank Culkin and neuroinflammation, being one of them, it was a presentation of our veteran population where we had a group of veterans who were given the diagnosis of TBI by the VA and they were assessed. 

Then I had a large group of veterans who came to us with PTSD, and when I interviewed them, they all had a pre-existing traumatic brain injury. That occurred before PTSD developed. I put this group together, assessed them the same way, treated them the same way, and looked at the outcome. The group that had purely the TBI diagnosis had a 77% improvement in one year. The group that had the addition of PTSD had a 72% improvement. Now why is that occurring? It is occurring because, for me, PTSD is a missed opportunity to treat TBI. If you treat TBI early, they will fix it faster. If you wait until they develop additional symptomatology because of the inflammation, people out there know that the brain sits in a fluid called cerebral spinal fluid. 

If damage happens on the left side, on the upper left, the chemistry that is produced gets mixed in with the CSF and goes to other sides of the brain. It is around it. If it is an inflammatory trigger, it goes to every place, so it can create inflammation all over. Depending on how long you are left with this inflammatory loop in the brain, additional areas may be added. The analogy I use is that if you cut your finger, you clean it, you kiss it, and it gets better, as opposed to if you cut your finger and ignore it. Put it in the dirt; you put it in your mouth, and it gets infected to the point that it needs to be amputated. The early intervention, TBI, resolves beautifully. Well, if you do not treat it properly, you end up getting a greater infection or inflammation of the brain that takes more time to get better.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Dr. Gordon, I think we probably have about 7 minutes left, and I wonder if you would like to talk about how that treatment looks to you. we’ve gotten up to in analyzing the factors. Okay. But take one minute, if you will, toward the end. I want to ask you about what is behind you, leaning up against the sofa. 

Mark Gordon, MD

Studio Les Paul. Anyway, yes, that is why I am presently doing Red House. Anyway,  when we get the tape biomarker panel done, it gets put into a software package called the Millennium Office Laboratory Assessor. What it does is look at these 28 points to the 28th power. The first one is looked at, followed by the second. Growth hormone looks at IGF-1, growth hormone looks at IGF-1, and IGF-binding protein-3. As you add in the different test results, it keeps on going back to seeing patterns because growth hormone influences, the thyroid. Growth hormone influences, prolactin. Prolactin influences growth hormones. Prolactin influences the thyroid. Prolactin influences luteinizing hormones. 

There are so many interactions that, for a regular individual, it takes a little while. It took me 40 years to memorize these pathways, which I incorporated into the software nine years ago when I started writing it, and it is been out for now two years. What it does is analyze not only the relationships between the hormones in the brain and below the neck but also incorporate the medication that you are on. If you are on a medication like Wellbutrin or L-dopa or Amantadine, what will happen is that it will alter the growth hormone production through the dopamine 1 receptor through receptors, stimulating receptors, and will give you a higher than expected level of prolactin if you have a tumor of prolactin. or something stimulating prolactin production, so the system will correct for the influence or acknowledge to you the influence of certain medications on your results so you do not over-treat or under-treat, and then it gives you a 12-page report. 

We are going line by line. It tells you what to do for each of the deficiencies, excessive notes, and so forth. One of our psychiatrists in Florida, who came on board with us a couple of years ago, used the program, called up, and said, Look at the software. She told me the patient had a tumor of the pituitary because the growth hormone level was elevated, and she would recommend that she get an MRI. She sent the patient for an MRI. A couple of days later, she sent me an email. Lo and behold, there was a tumor of the pituitary. Because there are certain patterns among our veterans. Having elevated DHEA with a low level of free testosterone is a clear signal of lead and mercury toxicity. It helped us with that. Also, if you have low vitamin D and you have elevated reverse T three, it is indicative of selenium deficiency, B12, B6, and elevated cortisol, ferritin, and iron deficiency, as well as it could signal that there is Hashimoto’s or Grave’s disease. The software ended up interpreting and suggesting that additional testing be done if the patterns are met. 

This helps us to accelerate. We have 107 clinics in eight countries that are using it now. What it does is accelerate the adaptation to what we have been working with for the past eight years in terms of neuron chronology and fixing the problem. Once we have the results, we know how to treat them. If it says deficiency and estrogen and testosterone, etc., it tells us how to start. What we use to help with the inflammation is a set of nootropics. Well, they are nootropic, but a set of nutraceutical products that we spent 16 years clinically testing, building into powdered forms of it. When we hit the powdered form, we converted it to a nanoliposomal product, which is in these little single-use packages. Each time we have three key products, Navy Seals and Virginia, we test our first one out, and then in the medics in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, our second product. Then, in 2020, we did a project with the Marines at Camp Pendleton with our key product, which is called Green Rescue 3. 

Those address not only neuroinflammation but also mitochondrial dysfunction. One of the major problems that happens from neuroinflammation is that it disrupts the intracellular space inside the cell. The powerhouse is called mitochondria and is responsible for generating ATP, which is the juice that runs our body. Under inflammation, the cells die because they are called organelles, mitochondria. Organelles die, and you lose energy. That is why you get some of the problems in the brain—the inability to regenerate or to heal. We juice it up, so to speak. We juice the juice up with PKU, which is a form of CoQ10, CoQ10, PKU, and some of the other important lower-numbered vitamin B’s, which we do not talk about: the B one, the B twos, and so forth. We have had just great, great responses, and we’ve got 400 veterans. I am self-funding, meaning that all the products that we sell generate funds that we use to help our veterans. 

Since the products have been doing better, we have been able to reduce the expense for our veterans by 60%. In certain cases, we pay for their treatments. They get the benefit. in the project with Walter Reed now, because of a paper that is on my website called Neuron Inflammation, the Road to Neuropsychiatric Illness, and it talks about how proxy nitrite can create damage and how inflammatory cytokines create damage that destroys the enzymes that allow for serotonin, melatonin, and a whole bunch of neurotransmitters to be produced in the brain. The reason why things like SSRIs do not work is because they assume that there is serotonin in the synaptic cleft in the area of transmission. But there is not, because the entire production of serotonin has been shut down by inflammation. The reason why things like Aricept and Namenda for Alzheimer’s do not work is because they assume acetylcholine is there, but there’s no acetylcholine. There is no acetylcholine. Pregnancy alone increases acetylcholine in four areas of the brain.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Dr. Gordon, thank you so much for speaking with us today. If someone wants to work with you through Millennium Health Center, how do they do that? How do they find you?

Mark Gordon, MD

Well, they go to our educational site, which is called TBI Help Now, dot org, O-R-G. That site has a lot of information. There are two or three places where, if you want to communicate with us, you just hit a button and put your name in it. If you want to give a very short description of what is going on, then the office will contact you, send you some documents, and then either my daughter, who has taken care of all our civilians for the past nine years, will contact you. If they are veterans, what will happen is that I will communicate with you just to make that connection, to let them know that we are here and that we support you, veteran or civilian, in achieving your goal of healing. Getting better.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Wonderful, just a quick question. Who are the top three guitar players in your mind?

Mark Gordon, MD

Let us rank the top three because I know Joe Satriani. I love his guitar playing, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and of course, because I am a boy from the 60s, I was born in 53. It is Jimi Hendrix.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Wonderful. Well, you are very good, and I cannot argue with you. Certainly, currently, I listen to a lot of jazz, so there are quite a few talented jazz guitarists as well who have influenced us. You did not mention the great Jimmy Page, of course.

Mark Gordon, MD

No, you only gave me three.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

That is true.  I have been listening to a lot of that. Artists the Tedeschi Trucks Band, the wonderful Derek, the wonderful Derek Trucks, and music that as well, got to Duane Allman.

Mark Gordon, MD

Yes, absolutely.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Excellent. Marcus. I saw them up there.

Mark Gordon, MD

I saw them. I saw Jimi Hendrix. I saw Janis Joplin, and I saw Santana when they were starting the whole bunch. All wonderful.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Alright. Thank you so much.

Mark Gordon, MD

My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to be well.