Security Halt!

The Silent Injuries of SWCC Boat Operators: TBI, Mental Health, and Veteran Healing

• Deny Caballero • Season 8 • Episode 394

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SPONSORED BY: PURE LIBERTY LABS, PRECISION WELLNESS GROUP, and THE SPECIAL FORCES FOUNDATION

 

In this episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero interviews Anthony Smith about health issues faced by military personnel, focusing on Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC)boat operations and support roles. They discuss how repetitive head trauma, sleep loss, and blast exposure often lead to misdiagnosed traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and mental health problems.

The conversation highlights shortcomings in military and VA recognition of TBI, frequent misattribution of symptoms, and the need for improved research and advocacy. Anthony also describes the 40G Reboot Foundation, which assists veterans with treatments like Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for TBI and PTSD.

Overall, this episode urges greater awareness and better care for veterans coping with invisible injuries.

 👉 Follow, like, and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts for more conversations on resilience, mental health, leadership, and growth.

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 Chapters

00:00 – Introduction and Personal Struggles
 02:51 – The Role of Boat Operators in Special Operations
 05:57 – Mental Health Challenges in the Military
 08:57 – Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
 12:03 – Research and Advocacy for TBI Awareness
 15:04 – Global Perspectives on TBI in Military Operations
 18:11 – The Need for Better Recognition of TBI
 20:54 – Personal Experiences with TBI and Recovery
 23:55 – Advancements in TBI Research and Treatment
 26:58 – Boat Safety Innovations and TBI Prevention
 29:56 – Reflections on the Impact of Service
 33:13 – The Birth of the 40G Reboot Foundation
 34:58 – Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) and Mental Health
 38:28 – Challenges in Treatment Accessibility
 43:51 – Advocating for Health, Wellness, and Prevention
 44:22 – Daily Routines and Cognitive Health Support
 49:04 – The Importance of Self-Advocacy and Community

 

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 Connect with Anthony Today!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-smith-m-a-03027121/

Website: https://millenniumhealthstore.com

Operator Syndrome: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32052666/

 

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Produced by Security Halt Media

SPEAKER_02:

Anthony Smith, welcome to Security Hall. How's it going, brother? I'm doing good, bro. How about yourself? Man, it's been a long day. I man, coming down right before I travel. I'm starting to get sick again. Yeah. It's gonna be a hellacious sprint uh through this trip. But you know what? Um a little bit of faith, a little bit of prayer, and a little bit of vitamin supplementation, I think I'll make it through it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, I uh I didn't get to bed till about 11 last night, man. And then some for some reason I woke up before in the middle of a conversation with somebody at work, and then I continued it once I woke up, laying there in bed, and then then uh, yeah, man, it's been a rough day.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, dude, sleep is the most important thing, and we don't give it enough priority. And I've had experts on here talk about sleep, and still I told myself, well, I'll just stay up a little later tonight. No, tonight, as soon as we get done with this, I'm wrapping it up. It's better to go to sleep early and wake up early than try to stay up a little extra later to do a little bit of work. It's not worth it, folks. Take it from me. Trust me. That's probably why I'm sick. That's uh that's your body stress reaction for me lately. It's uh you stay up, you burn it, you burn it down too much, and then uh then you start getting that cold feeling. Enough about that. Let's talk about boats. Assuming boats. Yep. Everybody focuses on seals because they're cool, they're tactical, they're high speed. But somewhere along the line, that operator is supported by a whole crew of badass mofos that get them to that infill, that get them out of and exfil them out of that place. And if you've seen those boats, holy shit, they're sexy. They got looks like porcupines, man. Guns come out of everywhere. Every SEAL movie at some point has them, and you're like, fuck yeah. And people forget the impact of that job is just as impactful as an operator hitting the objective on the ground. And uh today, Anthony, we're gonna talk about it because I didn't know it was an issue. I didn't. It wasn't until I saw the New York Times report on fighter pilots, on guys hitting the ramp on um on carriers having the same mental health issues. And that got me thinking. It's like, well, okay, what if you're on a boat and you're just hitting wake after wake, wave, wave, over and over. And uh, I tried finding sweet guys before, but leave it to you guys to be even more of the quiet professionals, not out there.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, yeah, we kind of just saw it in the shadows, man, and um don't like getting out in the public too much. I mean, that's kind of the way I've been, and I've been avoiding podcasts for a long time, but uh it's that point where I need to get out there and just say what needs to be said. So yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02:

So let's peel this layer layer by layer, man. How'd you find yourself in the nation's premier freaking boat teams?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I spent about 10 years in the regular Navy out on ships, and uh uh saw some fast boats, Mark Vives, come up uh one time alongside one of the ships I was on, and uh I saw the badass looking cigarette boat, man, all the guns and shit, all the dudes jocked up into cool looking gear. I'm like, whatever the fuck they're doing, man. That's what I want to do. So uh I uh yeah, that's that was pretty much my motivation, man. I uh I started kind of asking around talking to some guys and uh we were on ARG at the time, and there were some boat guys on one of the other ships. Uh I kind of went over and talked to those guys and I just wanted to do it after that, man. So that's what I did back in back in '96 is when I went into swing. Oh shit. 1996. Yeah. I did uh 14 years as a boat operator, my first 10 years, like I said, in the Navy, and then uh ended up doing just 24. The slamming and and um what it did to my body, man, kind of took me out of the fight. Back in 2004, I had a seizure kind of out of nowhere. And uh that was about eight years into being a but being a boat guy, man.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's that's that's about average uh for us. Uh eight to ten years. Ten years is about the norm for you know, the wheels kind of fall off with all these different injuries that you have. And ten or eleven years was about average for most of us.

SPEAKER_02:

How many guys like you were having seizures that were disrupting uh, you know, careers?

SPEAKER_00:

Um there's a few guys that had seizures I haven't heard of a lot. Um there's guys that have retired that have had aneurysms and strokes and those types of things. Um it's mostly just the TBI stuff. Um well, for example, I I had only been in the boat community a year, and my wife, who uh we were dating at the time, she said that's when my personality started changing. So she saw the progression in my personality. Within the first year, within the first year, I couldn't, within the first six months, I couldn't rotate my head, man. I had to start going to chiropractors and kind of getting my neck worked on. And uh from that point forward, man, it just it kind of kept us cascading on. So I asked a question in one of the surveys I did about personality changes. You know, if you were the same person today that you were back when you joined, and you know, it was 100% like, hell no, man, you know, this completely changes everything about me, who I am, you know, personality, all that kind of thing. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

We've seen it in blunt force trauma that the case studies I I was not understanding of, and none of us are. We don't understand the issues and how blast exposure, impact, concussions, hitting your head on a parachute landing fall. Nobody stops to think that this injury that by and large doesn't have a signature on your face or your arms or your legs can impact you drastically. And it's all it's all about the amount of times it's all it's you're you're pouring cups into a barrel. At some point, it's gonna add up, it's gonna overfill. But none of us knew that. None of us and just now are starting to talk about it, and the personality change. That's one of the big things, quick to fire, quick to anger, quick to have the emotional response. But everybody around us was doing it, so I didn't think anything different. That um is this something that you know, when you're putting these pieces together, how are the guys on your team? How are they coming around? Are are you guys talking about it, or was it pretty much just sort of like you're you're keeping tabs on it, you're experiencing it, and you're keeping it close?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh back then, man, uh we just did the job. I don't think anybody bitched about anything. We saw the everyone kind of had those changes, and you know, and everyone tried to pin everything on alcohol, just deploying and drinking. You are the way you are because you're you drink all the time or whatever. But I think a lot of the the things going on inside of the head caused or drove a lot of the alcohol guys. But alcohol's not the issue, man. I mean, everybody drank, but those boats, um well, you know, I I talked about uh the fulcrum being the C5 in the head and the you know, you know, kind of being the the stick in your head being that that hammer man, and when you take that 20 G impact, that fulcrum swings that head forward and it's a 40 G impact on your head. And when you're doing that, that's that's a rotational, that's a rotational shearing of axons in the brain. And um what I've learned more recently is I had over 100 guys that helped get into Tulane's TBI clinic. Other guys have gone to UNC Thrive and all these other clinics, but most of us have what they call uh central processing disorder. And basically what that is inside of the brain, in the middle of the brain, there's a bundle of wires, wires, uh there's a network um inside, it's connected to each part of the brain. Um and that shears, you know, have that you get that axonal shearing with diffuse axonal injury or rotational forces, and that this that disconnects the information flow from the frontal lobe to the um to the back of the brain and then to everything in the middle. Um it uh disrupts your endocrine system, it disrupts your hypothalamus, your pituitary gland, all your hormones, but it it disrupts uh everything firing inside of the brain. So when you look at um all of those different uh questionnaires that you take, psych tests and those types of things, and it talks about you ever see yourselves moving really slow and thinking slow. That's all fucking central processing disorder. And I was like, holy shit, man, I kind of just put it all together. Yeah. I know why they asked those questions, but yeah, man, every every symptom on every one of those freaking checklists, uh, yeah, you check, you check every one of them up, man.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. That's if if you're honest, if guys in these career fields, and I'm no different, I'm guilty of it. I did it. We are ever after every deployment, you're quick to sit down, and every one of those questionnaires, you're like, five out of five, I'm perfect, I'm great, everything. Like whatever can whatever you have to do and say to stay operational. Uh that's everybody's, and even if you're in the worst pain and manageable, and people will ask, well, why? Why would you do that? The job, the mission, the allure of being in a community so small and so elite that few people have an understanding of it. Like it's to get on a boat and do an over-the-horizon mission with a bunch of dudes to drop them off or in the middle of the night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Every night. Yeah, man. Well, I know I know guys that shot at least 10 million rounds of 50 cal. Um, I probably I probably shot over a million uh in my time. We had twin fifties, man, so I'm I'm right in the middle of two barrels, just blasting away. Uh, you never thought about that. I I don't even talk about um blast over pressure, but we were subjected to a shitload of cruise serve weapons, blast overpressure. Um I I've been focusing on diffuse axonal injury and uh supposed you know repetitive head injury, uh microconcussions from wave slamming because um that's the one thing that nobody really knows, and that's what's really taking us out.

SPEAKER_02:

Let's break it, let's break that down. Let's let's let's put a pin on that and actually like dive into that. How did you find yourself, everybody and over everybody always discredits the guy in these career fields that are gathering the knowledge, gathering the know-how, and bringing the knowledge to their brother. Say, oh, you can't do it, you don't have a degree. How did you find yourself being this, you know, this hyper focused advocate and studying this stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, um, like I said, I I was in the Navy for or I was in SWIC for eight years when I started having these issues. And then after the seizure, I had anxiety and depression and insomnia and sleep apnea and all this other shit. And um, I was still in the Navy. And um when I retired, none of that stuff was connected to traumatic brain injury. But then, so I I retired in 2010, about 2017, 18, that time frame. I really noticed the cognitive issues, the memory issues, and you know, all of the things that kind of come with it, you know, as you get older. So as I asked guys, hey, what the hell's going on? Are you having these problems? You know, you talk to all your other buddies that you deployed with and that you know, and everybody started talking about it. Um, yeah, this is what's going on. These boats are causing wave slamming and it's causing TVI. From that point, I started digging into it and I'm like, oh shit, these boats uh slamming the waves, high G's, 40, 50 G's, 120 G rotational forces on the head, and um it causes traumatic brain injury. So I got a little bit of knowledge about it. I went to the VA, went to their polytrauma clinic, and they they looked at me like I had something growing out of my forehead, I'm not gonna say. But um, yeah. Was that the STAR program in Virginia or see? I'm I'm down in Mississippi. So, yeah, because I'd been out of I'd been out of the Navy um in 2015 is when they started up NYCO, I think. Switch guys were going to NYCO starting around that time frame. So that kind of gave me that understanding, all right, this is what it is. The VA flat out just told me, hey man, you don't have any problems. They told me my only concussion was when I went to Iraq as a as a contractor because I fucking head butt at the table one night fighting in my sleep and woke up on the floor. And um they're like, that's your only concussion, bro. And um, so my my VA claim was denied, and um then a buddy turned me on to Tulane. I went I went to Tulane and did their three-day assessment. They were like, holy shit, man, you got some real problems. So I took their 70 pages of uh diagnosis that they gave me, and I I shoved that down to the VA as well, and you know, I still got nowhere with the VA, man. I was in a I was I was out actually I was in a doctoral program at the time, and um I started doing about 30, 40 hours a a week of of research on TBI, and uh I just said I can't do both 'cause the doctoral program was taking about fifty hours a week. I was working a full-time job, still am. Um I was at the point where I just couldn't read, comprehend, remember, and I just I was just like I gotta get out of this doctoral program, and I just gotta focus on this TBI stuff. So I just started spending my off hours 16 hours a weekend on just digging into this stuff, um doing interviews, posting interviews online, doing YouTube stuff, um, and then doing surveys. I did a couple surveys. Um between two surveys that I've done, uh I I did over 500 guys in those surveys. And my last one has has a lot of Coast Guard and Riverine, U.S. Navy Riverine guys, uh, some British SBS guys, Australians. I uh kind of reached out to a bunch of different entities. And um what I found, man, was the same thing. It's a it's you know, it's a it's a global thing on every military around the world that has fastboats and special, you know, special operations, whatever. All of these dudes are slamming, slamming waves, destroying their bodies, and destroying their brains.

SPEAKER_02:

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SPEAKER_00:

And uh we uh believe it or not, unfortunately, we're we're the most advanced with knowing what's going on with us and getting guys help and getting guys of treatment. Uh the UK and the Australians, man, they're way behind us. They're still back in the 70s in the 90s, 80s and 90s, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Man, I just had um Daniel Pace on from Blast Buddy, and there, I think maybe the focus is more on the blast and not on the riverine, the Mauerops, and those issues. There might be something there because they have they have so much advocacy coming out of Australia. The most help um that I've gotten with connections and people, and there's a lot of mean, just blood, sweat, and tears on on both in both sides. People are are are in this fight in both countries, but man, yeah, it it can become a hyper focus issue, I feel. And we're not we're not opening up the aperture and looking at the entirety of the force. Um, because I wasn't. I wasn't I wasn't thinking about it for a long time. And it very much like you until I went back to school and I started putting things together. Like when you start hearing about guys within very specific niche communities having symptoms like Parkinson's having issues with their memory, cognitive function, it's like, holy shit, these are tier, these these are the cream of the crop, these are like the tip of the spear guys, and the vast majority of them are dealing with these issues. Okay, it's comforting to know you're not alone, but it's also like, why it's such a small community that we can come together and pull resources and take care of them. At the very least, ensure that the VA process is developed and fine-tuned to properly accommodate the individual on the outside when he goes through the process. Because everybody I've talked to has the same story. VA doesn't recognize my injuries, VA doesn't give me a rating for this, they give you a high rating for PTSD. They're not willing to admit that you have a TBI or something wrong with your brain. Um, unless it's a very, very significant case where there is absolutely no getting away from it. Because by and large, guys from our community, they function. They build scaffolding where there's issues. I remember I couldn't fucking read to save my life, but I would highlight and I would then take little note cards and rewrite the things I needed to remember and have it on me and carry 15 notebooks and then stash things that I knew I was constantly losing in the back of my truck because we're trying desperately to build a support system for everything that's fucking up in our lives. Yeah. And I think a vast majority of people on the civilian space, if they're dealing with this, they don't do that. They don't have a mission or a purpose where it's driving them to do this stuff. So that's why we're very unique. Uh and this goes across to mortarmen, artillerymen, first members are actively engaged in these jobs where the profession and the and the service matters. And it's a it's a big disservice to our communities when we're getting out and people aren't listening and they're not really doing a good job of documenting these injuries. So being able to say, like, hey, this career field definitely meets the list of criteria for X, Y, and Z. Because every guy I know, whether it's Ranger Regiment, Navy SEALs, SF, they're getting out and they're like, yeah, they didn't give me shit for TBI. Like, I got documented vestibular issues from the Polytrauma Treatment Center, but they're not giving me anything for TBI. And it's it's criminal at this point.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I don't know, man. I um I'm in the process of getting something published with uh a neurosurgeon and his team uh from the last uh research project that I did. And um the results in that survey and what we're publishing, they're gonna have to look at it when they see this stuff, man, because it's 100% TVI, 100% concussion symptoms from wave salmon, and then every dude has 30 to 40 different comorbidities that are secondary to traumatic brain injury. And and that's not including the spinal stuff. Man, I have 31 vertebrae that have in plate fractures. I have three wedge fractures, I have uh nine millimeter stenosis in my C5 from all of that fucking uh whiplash. And Something that I learned recently is that when you have when you have fractures in your vertebrae, it's sending inflammation through your cerebral spinal fluid that's going into your brain. Anything that's involved in cerebral spinal fluid, and it's it's it's a permanent uh mechanism for neuroinflammation. You can't turn it off. It's in my entire fucking spine. My entire spine is causing neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation is the number one driver of Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's, and CTE. So that is that's permanently turned on inside of my brain, and I can't turn it off. I'm taking all of this shit from neuroinflammation, I'm doing HBOT, I'm doing all of these different modalities of treatment just to maintain the functional level that I have. Um it's not gonna improve. I'm not gonna stop it. I'm just prolonging what's gonna what's gonna happen down the road, man. I know what the inevitable is because I've done enough research on it. So Yeah. It can it can definitely get dark.

SPEAKER_02:

It can definitely but I think I think there's a lot of love and a lot of passion behind this to help everybody else in the community. And we can't lose sight of that. You're doing a lot of work for others, even if you can't directly reap the benefit of this. I think that there's there's enough hope and enough people working this problem that I I don't think we're in a firefight by ourselves. I I don't like I I want to be the optimist because it is it is very depressing when you look at the suicide rates, when you look at the um, I mean, hell, the the the the guys that are cognitive aware are they're so they're hyper-aware there's a problem in here. They don't have a degree, they don't have a doctorate, they never studied anatomy, they're suffering from these effects, and they're so aware that there's something wrong in their brain that before they commit suicide, they write down, hey, please, I'm not I'm not shooting myself in the brain, please study it. That's a real thing that happened, that's a real seal that's no longer with us that had enough enough fucking cognitive ability to understand within his own brain there was a ticking time bomb.

SPEAKER_00:

And we we had uh senior chief Troy Norrell, man, um 22, 23. Um he um shot himself in the ch in his in his heart just so they would look at his brain. He was he was delusional. Hey, they're in my brain, they're still in my information, and they put they even planted shit in my head. He was he was at that level, man. And um, it's sad, but um he's the one they did the Jamma study on 2025. It was published with Dr. Pearl out out of Bethesda, and um he had um level four CTE, 44 years old, the same shit they see in 60-year-old deceased NFL players with a full career. Holy shit. What I tell people is, hey man, NFL players in in their entire career, they get about 30,000 impacts. And bro, we get that and we get that in an eight, 10-hour run on a boat. We get 28,000 uh impacts if you're doing one-second intervals in in eight hours. So in my career, I probably got 30, 40 million impacts, repetitive head injury. So nobody that I know of in any career field has that many repetitive head impacts. So if these dudes are doing 20 years in the NFL and getting out or and and dying and having level four CTE, man, we're it's um, yeah. I'm just realistic, man. I mean, I'm a realist, I just look at it and see see what it is, man. I'm not trying to bullshit people and say, hey, everything's gonna be great for you know, you're gonna die when you're 80, and everything's gonna be fine. It's um just looking at the facts, what it is.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And you meant you mentioned before you work with Dr. Pearl, uh, Dr. Pearl, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh I've communicated back and forth to his office and uh sent as many D's as I could to donate their brains. Uh the research that I'm trying to get published is with uh Dr. Maroon. He the uh Dr. Maroon, yep. Yeah. He's uh he's a good D, man. He's smart on all this stuff. And you know, he spent 40 years in the NFL with uh TBI protocols. So yeah. If we get that published, man, that's gonna be it. It's gonna be big. So where's it at so far? It's already um it's in a it's in a magazine waiting to to be um approved, basically. Nice. Everything's done, just waiting, wait for it to be approved.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it it's it's kind of crazy to think that you spent your entire career serving the nation, doing a job again. Very few people get to do it. And it took so much from you. It's taken a lot, and now rather than walk away, rather than sit and isolate, you're you're leading the charge. You're you're sitting here actively working this problem with some of our nation's leading experts. Like, have you given yourself a moment to reflect and think, like, holy shit, like this this is my life right now. I am leading the way and fighting for our guys.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um that's kind of the unique thing to happen. Um I didn't really I didn't plan on all of this kind of happening. I just I just wanted to get the word out, man. But um I started posting everything that I did on LinkedIn. And then, you know, and I put all my YouTube videos up. I did 25 interviews with guys, and doctors were look were looking at it because I had TBI and and all the other stuff in the title. And I just kind of started having doctors reach out to me, man. I had uh Chris Free, Operator Syndrome. He reached out to me. Um, I put a little blurb in and uh it got published in his book, you know. I mean, I I text him and talk to him all the time. Uh some other doctors, um, Dr. Stepanenko is a he's a big advocate out there. He was he was in the army and treated a lot of SF guys. Uh he's uh he's actually a big uh connected with Jeff Darty and um those guys over in Task Force Dagger. So I kind of made all those connections through him. So I've met a lot of doctors, met a lot of researchers. I put the you know, people that are in DOD research, people out of the University of Pittsburgh. I met the I met the doctor that was uh under the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2008 that started the entire TVI program to Macedonia and um connected back and forth with him. He's like, Yeah, man, we totally missed you dudes. We we didn't know anything about you guys. Yeah. And um, so I made a lot of connections around the world, and um, it's been good, man. There's there's there's a lot of help, a lot of networking. Uh so it's slowly come together.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and and that's the thing, it takes a long time to direct this you know boat of healing and care towards the right objective. There's a lot of movement towards blast exposure, there's a lot of advocacy on measuring and blast devices. Shout out to Blast Buddy, uh, shout out to Daniel Pace, James Engall. There's tons of guys out there that are doing a lot of work, but I haven't heard anything about preventive devices or changing something to make it safer when it comes to the boats. What what are you seeing in the space? Is there any sort of advocacy, any sort of war working groups are trying to address the problem at its source?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I know Naval Special Warfare Group 4 uh on a uh they put out a I think it's called a Falcon site. They they did uh request for information from different uh boat builders. What they're looking for is is ways to mitigate uh 15 to 20 G uh sustained slamming impacts on fast boats. So they're actively looking for different things. Uh we had different types of cushion that we stood on, different types of seats. Um I don't know what you do on a fast boat doing 60 miles an hour in in five, six foot seas, man. That thing's gonna slam, it's gonna it's gonna break everything inside your body, it's gonna break the boat. Um get off the boats or or get some. There's there's actually a lot of guys that build boats over in uh the other side of the world, uh Scandinavian countries. They've shown me a lot of things. I I think there's a lot of technology out there, man. Um that's kind of skims over and doesn't slam as much. So I don't know. Spec War just needs to get in gear, man. Socom, all those guys, and they need to get boats at work, man.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we need to get Lucky Palmer on this. That guy, if anybody can figure out how to solve this, is this it's that guy, that uh that big brain over at Android. That make it uh, I don't know. It would suck to r replace dudes, but um maybe you know outsource it to AI and uh having an automated system, having an AI companion dropping those boys off.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I know they um they use virtual reality or they're going to virtual reality where they can get a lot of time in that space where they don't have to get out there and get slammed. Yeah. And uh so if you could just minimize the amount of time on the water, I think that's the seals are always always gonna need to hit a target on the water. They're always gonna need boats, they're gonna have to have demons out there doing it. I don't think I don't think this mission set's gonna go away. Um They just need to minimize the amount of time out there. They need to know what, you know, slow down when you get slowed down. Don't be don't be like us, man. Back when I was out there, we I I did almost six years straight at 50 knots, man, like an idiot. And that that's all we did was we went as fast as those boats would go, man. And we all paid the price for it, you know, and we're still paying it.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's it's hard too, because we look at it from our our perspective now, today, as individuals who are impacted by something, want to bring awareness to this issue, want to help the next generation of war fighters. But if somebody would have told you this when you were a kid or or just gotten into the job, excited to do this thing, would you have listened? Because I I ask myself that question all the time. If somebody would have said, hey, watch your exposure, advocate, stand up, say something, hold yourself to to accountable to being a professional in your field, study regulation, study exposure, study blast, find ways to mitigate it. I don't know if I would have been able to, if I would have been willing to listen, because it's a time of war.

SPEAKER_00:

I wouldn't at that age, man. You know, and all their researchers in the 90s, uh, they said, hey, these, as long as these these guys are in top shape, in great physical shape, their bodies will be able to take this exposure. You know, and those studies that they did in the 90s, I was in that cohort. Really? We were we were in phenomenal shape, but now I'm destroyed, man. So I'm 11 Testament, and so there's another thousand d's in my cohort that all are broken just like me, man. So it doesn't matter what shape you're in, if you're exposing the vibration and shock at that high level, at those G forces constantly, it's just gonna destroy you. It destroys everything. I've had 12 surgeries. I've got about eight more I need to get. So and I know plenty of dudes with hip replacements. They they wanted to do both my hips. I need both my both my knees done. Yeah, that's not I've had 12 joint surgeries, and I've got all these uh spinal fractures, and I've got to get my C5 done, or I'm gonna be a paraplegic man, because it's clamping down. So Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

I I shot my um C5, C6 disc all the way out in the spinal column sheath and had emergency surgery, and um it it was and I ate that pain for years. Yeah. Uh it was just to constantly referring them, oh, it's just a muscle injury, it's a muscle injury. I've been educated.

SPEAKER_00:

I've it I just prolonged spinal uh surgery as long as I uh could, man. But my neck's I've gotta get my neck done, I've got to get my lumbar spine done. I I think my T8 is poking into my spinal cord, uh touching my spinal cord and causing my leg to go numb. So yeah, I've got to I've got to do something with that sometime.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, it's there's a lot of advancements, but there's so so many, so much information out there. You know, everybody, it seems like at one moment everybody's pushing for um PRP. Then the next moment it's stem cells, and then now stem cells are not the thing to go to. Now it's it's it's treat everything with peptides, and it's like, fuck, dude. Honey makes sense of what to use, what to do, and when to go after, because I've seen such a steady rise in hip replacement and shoulder and um shoulder uh surgeries within guys in my age group before I even got out, late, late to late 30s to early 40s, guys getting hip replacements, double hip replacements, knee replacements. And I'm like, we're not that old. We're not that old. Like it in the the idea that that's that's being normalized now, that's a scary part. Like, we need our our guys in these jobs to be fully operational with everything that they were brought into this world for as long as possible because the one thing they're not talking about, after you have these major surgeries, what's the impact on your overall health? What's the impact if you get one hip replacement? Is that going to create more issues on the other hip? What are the issues? All I know is I've seen a lot of guys start with one and then very much within the next couple years, here comes the other.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna do both on these, man, but I'm almost 60, man, so no shit.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm getting older. You're doing some good. You don't look that old.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I drank beer for a long time, man. So I think that's what did it.

SPEAKER_02:

It's the course light that's keeping you young.

SPEAKER_00:

It was beer, and I spent about 30 years running, man, but you know, I can't run, I can't run to the garage door now, but uh yeah. Well, um someone of doctors told me, hey, um, you know, with the uh with the central processing disorder and and how it affects those parts of the brain, man. Um the endocrine problem causes low T. It causes um uh issues with DHEA, issues with pregnenolone. Yep. So I've all these different things. So I'm on DHEA, I'm on pregninolone, I'm on E uh DHA EPA, omega-3s, about 2,000 uh milligrams or grams, two grams. Uh hormone replacement, you know, testosterone. So it's it's a number of things kind of evening out, man. Or trying to even out. But but that's because the brain and the body is not functioning at that level anymore and it's not producing those things. So I'm gonna be on I'm gonna be on all of those things the rest of my life, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So I I tell young guys all the time, and and it's people think hormone optimization, it's like, oh, super sexy, high speed. No, it it is a big decision. This episode is also brought to you by Precision Wellness Group. Getting your hormones optimized shouldn't be a difficult task. And Dr. Taylor Bosley has changed the game. Head on over to Precision Wellness Group.com, enroll, and become a patient today. And we're back after a a message from our sponsors. Boom, that's what I'll do. And they won't be any wiser. So, man, uh before we we start to wind it down, uh, how'd you find yourself starting the 40G Reboot Foundation?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, well, I decided that um I knew enough about the injury and and kind of what it's doing to us. I I wanted to figure out a way to focus on healing and treatments. And um I realized that there, you know, there's a bunch of there's a bunch of nonprofits out there. I mean, uh everybody has that for us in our community, it's kind of hard for us to get into a lot of different nonprofits and and get the kind of treatment that we're looking for. Man, I I figured like the best way to do this, man, is just do it myself, take care of my own. So that was kind of the mentality with it. And uh however, I I realize that it's not just us, man. There's so many Coast Guard guys that are beat up like this and ladies and the rivering folks. I mean, it's such it's a lot bigger than SWIC, man. And um, most of these guys, they don't a lot of these guys don't have combat deployments and those types of things where you know everyone's checking your DD214 and they're only gonna treat you if you meet certain criteria. I was like, the only way I'm gonna get these dudes uh to those types of treatments is just get it done myself, man, and just not have that type of criteria on it. So I just decided to do the 40G uh 40G reboot foundation, um, get that up and going. That's my end goal, and just um uh go to treatments like HBot, uh try to get SGB and all those other things that that are out there that I know make a difference because I've been to them. So and to date, how many guys have you been able to help through this? Uh there's been about 15 or 20 that have gone up to do HBOT. Um so I still don't have, I mean, nonprofit is it exists, EIN exists. Um, I don't have any funds. I haven't started fundraising or doing any of those types of things. So it's just been through all the avenues that I've made all my uh research connections with, getting guys to different types of treatments, reaching out to other people. I found a clinic up in Harrisburg. Um, they they give us$65,000 in treatment, which includes you know 60 to 80 uh hours of HBOT combined stacked with TMS and also with physical training to kind of um solidify what's going on inside of the brain and the body with with healing. Um so that treatment alone, man, it's it's free to us. It's funded. We just I just gotta get bodies to it. So that's my part of the equation is eventually just to help fund uh guys being able to stay there uh and food or whatever, and the treatments coming from other pots of money that they're taking care of. So this trip this clinic has about 10 years of funds set up to treat guys. So they're they're looking for soft operators, man. And uh I'm just trying to get guys there.

SPEAKER_02:

So that's that's the missing, and that's the the difficult one, right? Is you want to advocate and help folks, but how do you find them? Because our guys, our community, dudes, they're hard to find. They're hard to get when they're to find them in a place they're willing to get help.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, if if you do 60 hours of H bot, that's almost three weeks, and and um the way they stack this up is it's Seven days a week. There's no breaks. So all the way through, you do an hour and a half of H bott session in the morning, four hours in between. You do another hour and a half in the evening or afternoon. In the middle of all that, you're doing TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and you're also doing the physical training. So they have trainers up there that go through all this stuff. So it's a whole cast of people that are it's it's inside the University of Harrisburg up in Pennsylvania, where the facility's at. But um yeah, man, you're stacked through this stuff for the entire time that you that you're there getting getting this treatment. But you leave out of there saturated with OT, man. It's just like you lead or like, holy shit, man, I'm like a new person. It's just a it's just a different experience, man. Because HP get Oh, go ahead. It gets down, it gets down in every cell, man, pressurized, and I mean it just it regrows blood vessels, it re redoes synapses, micro, you know, um mitochondria. It does all kinds of things. Um I need to get more of it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. That's the one thing I know that I've talked to guys, uh, it's life-changing. Individuals that go through this, they don't come back the same, and they they all have the same mentality. I wish I would have found this sooner. They all have the same testimony, man. And but the thing that I've seen in in in the um medical research world, in the white paper world, and the studies world, a lot of people don't want to back it. I haven't seen a lot of people embrace it, and I've actually seen the opposite, where people are really quick to slide in my DMs or slide in my LinkedIn messages when I have somebody talking about it saying, well, it's not properly fully studied and vetted. And I'm like, when it comes to treating guys in a very small community, and they're all having the same response to it, they're all having a positive reaction from it, like that's kind of hard to ignore.

SPEAKER_00:

Man, we had uh over 75% extremely positive response rate to everybody that went up there. And I'm talking about 75% reduction and PTSD, anxiety, depression, and all those different things. Guys that went up there, one one guy went up there, he did over a hundred hours. He was there for over two months, and he's like, Man, if I can remember the card number on my credit card, you know, that's that's kind of like the the gold standard for me. And we were there for three three, four weeks, and he can remember it. And uh his brain was fried, man. He was so fucked up. He's like, I'm gonna I'm just gonna do a world tour, man. I'm calling it quits. You know, he was one of those guys, but he he left there going, Holy shit, man, I'm so much better now. So Yeah. I've seen I've seen that that change in in in people, man. So it definitely works. I wish Spec War and Olivesoft would implement HBot, where all those teams are focused at, you know, East Coast, West Coast, and that it would be a 30 or not a 30, a 40 to 80 hour treatment every year. If you're in the teams, every year you go through HBot.

SPEAKER_02:

It makes sense. We have access to dive chambers, we have access to the tech.

SPEAKER_00:

Um and I'm talking about state-of-the-art chambers where you're sitting in a recliner chair, looking at a freaking iPad, reading, watching movies, and you're in there, man, sleeping if you want to sleep, and there's four people in there or whatever the size of the chamber is, man. Those chambers um up there in Harrisburg, they uh they bought them out of Turkey, man. Those they're state-of-the-art technology. Wow. They're very nice.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, it's it's definitely one of the things where it's we can implement. We have funds. We have an uh insane amount of money. It it's it's a no-brainer. I just don't understand why we can't I think the the greatest thing we could do for recruitment is have a united front, a united messaging campaign that says, we're gonna make you the world's most elite fighting force. We're gonna give you every tool to take the fight to the enemy. And on the backside, we're gonna ensure that when you are done, when you return back to the civilian population and your mission's done, we're gonna ensure that you leave with the integrity, with a healthy, clean bill that says that you're you're we did everything we could and more to heal you and recover you so you can be a better steward of the profession and you can talk positively about the experience. Because I will tell you, I have sat across from many guys in interviews very much like this, and a lot of them say the same thing. It was great. I I'm glad I did it. But you won't catch me putting my son into it or giving him that idea. Like, and that's that's a shame. That's a shame because we should promote this. There's no finer calling than being of of service to your nation. But you know, I can't I can't look at a guy and be like, no, you you you're wrong for that. Because at the end of the day, you're well informed now. You know what it's gonna cost. And looking at your kid, and we have it, we it's happened in the GWAT so many times. Guys deployed with their own sons, went to combat with their sons. I know Sar majors that went on missions and they're like, holy shit, my kid's a friggin' private and ranger regiment right now, like in country.

SPEAKER_00:

Man, one sweet guy in one deployment cycle with four years in the Navy is gonna get right around eight million impacts. One guy. One deployment cycle. There's there's guys in the surveys that I did, they did four years in the Navy, they did they did a deployment, some of them did two, uh and now at 50 years old, they have 40 comorbidities or 30 comorbidities, and they're just as fucked up as the guys that did 20 years with all of the same problems. You're like, how the hell can that be? And you know, there was a you know, the attitude of the community for a for a long time with their care providers is like, well, how long did you do? You only did four years, you know. Man, these dudes got fucked up just like the guys that did 14 or 20 years, or like like the rest of us, the guys that retired. The only difference is we just did a lot worse and a lot more to our, you know, to our bodies when we did all the deployments. Because you just accumulate 30, 40, 50 million impacts. But that's a death sentence to your brain, man. It really is. I mean we've got to seek every solution possible when it comes to treatments to make sure that we can prevent as much Alzheimer's dementia and those other things as possible. So that's that's the direction I want to go with this.

SPEAKER_02:

And Anthony, you mentioned you were talking about a little bit earlier, and just want to recap and kind of make sure the audience is tracking. There's still a lot of things you can do in your day-to-day, in your diet, the what you put in your body, nutritional supplementation. What do you do as far as supplements, medication that that you're going through providers to get your hands on that are providing, you know, you know, uh a benefit and they're making an impact, a positive impact on your daily cognitive function?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, my daily routine is I get up at 4 45, I do red light therapy, I lay flat on my back with a heating pad. Um I take Dr. Mark Gordon's uh brain care stuff, and I've been taking that for a couple years. That that stuff works, man, it does. Um Switch Guy just came up with some stuff called themos. I've been giving it a try, and it's giving me a lot more energy and focus. It's kind of helped me out too. Um but I do the DHA, uh EPA, the DHEA, the pregnant alone, testosterone is is I think the only thing that I'm getting as, you know, a drug or whatever. Um I do take a sleep med, uh about half of a sleep med, what I would normally want to take. Uh everything I take is just natural stuff, man. I'm not on any kind of I'm not on narcotics, I'm not, I'm not on any of that stuff, and I'm I'm not gonna get on any of that stuff. Hell yeah. You know, it's just my my my my biggest fight is neuroinflammation. You know, Mark Gordon explained it to me. I understood it. I've talked to other doctors and and and they told me about neuroinflammation. I do take glicene um in a in a uh supplement called continual G, which is something Dr. Marine told me about. And uh glycine gets into the cells, it causes the cells and naturally produces on glutathione. And glutathione is is it's what's in all of your cells that's fighting off free radicals, it's fighting off inflammation, it's fighting off all of these things. So I take that every day, and and you know, between Mark Gordon's stuff and the and the uh the glycine, man, um every time I'm around sick people, I don't really get sick. I can feel it coming on, but my body fights that stuff off pretty well, and uh it it fights off the things that are attacking my cells. So it's it's working, man. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a huge, huge shout out to Dr. Mark Gordon. That man has moved mountains in my own healing journey, in every Green Beret, every seal, every ranger, everybody I send their way, and here's here it is uh scan the QR code, go to Millennium Health Store, um, purchase this product. I'm gonna be working with Dr. Gordon in the coming year to get my hands on more of that supplement because I send it out. It's more as soon as I get it, get it in, just send it out to my buddy Woody because it makes a difference. It makes a difference. And it's not a harmful pharmaceutical, it's not some compound that you have to take in a pill form, it's nutritional supplementation that makes an impact. Your brain is on fire. No amount of narcotics that you're getting from the VA is going to help remedy that. But in my lived experience and what I've seen work with my friends, his products work. Um, and I trust him. Uh, I I came I came to him when I was still dealing with stuff, still dealing with issues, and he's the first one in his uh in you know, in his vernacular, your brain's on fire, Denny. It's on fire. You gotta put it out. But nobody was talking about that. Everything was being prescribed in a pill that had some sort of adverse effect. You take this, you're gonna retain weight, you're gonna put on, you're not gonna be able to feel like your old self. You're gonna go through all this. And I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you things from my lived experience that worked for me. Anthony's telling you lived experience, uh, the stuff that works for him. But I'm telling you, guys, please, again, scan the QR code, go to Millennium Health Store, try it out. Just try it once. I'll do you one better. If you really want to try it and you don't want to pay the money, reach out to me. I will copy one. Not for everybody, not for everybody. But if you hit me up as soon as this airs and you want to you want you get your hands on it, I will get it to you. I believe in that product and I believe in Dr. Gordon that much. It works. Um, it works, man. It absolutely works. Uh, I've I've given testimony about my my my journey through health issues where everybody sell everybody else is willing to say, no, you're not gonna be able to run again. No, the pain in your feet aren't gonna go away. No, you're gonna have to deal with this, you're gonna have to take this, challenge it, be an advocate for your own health, for your own issues, do the research, study. It's there. I know it takes a lot to sit down and highlight words out of a book. I took that first white paper study from Dr. Free, and it was highlighted over and over and over again. But I went to that doctor as soon as I understood it, and I said, everything in here is what I'm feeling in here and here and all in my body. Make it make sense. Treat me as a whole person. And rather than that doctor being angry and mad at me, he's like, huh. He sat down, he took the time to read that. He read that entire white paper study with me, and he looked at my lived experience, looked at where I was stationed before, looked at my combat deployments, and said, Yeah, you're different. You're you're part of this defamographic, you're part of this community. We should be treating you differently. And I'll and if I wouldn't have done that, if I wouldn't have brought that paper, if I wouldn't have sat down and highlighted it and read those keywords and understood it, I'd still been dealing with pretty much the same diagnosis of, oh, it's just PTSD anxiety and depression. There's more to it, folks, but it's only when you take initiative, when you start advocating for yourself, that doors will open and people will reach out. Trust me, people want to help. Guys like Anthony are out there. It it takes a lot to create something from from scratch to get guys into treatment centers, but that just shows you the level of passion and commitment guys like Anthony have.

SPEAKER_00:

I would say that hey um you get diffuse axon or injury from from slam on both. It's a serious brain injury. You don't really know it when you're young, but as you get older, it really starts to kind of take over. Uh so you have to turn off that neuroinflammation. You have to regenerate that brain. Um, and there's there's a list of things. I didn't mention creatine. Yeah, I'm I'm on uh Jacku's creatine and uh his uh his greens, you know. So I'm on I'm on a long list of things, man, that are that are combating all of these problems with with my endocrine system and my brain being messed up. Um it's it's a matter of understanding of what all of these things are going on inside of your body, what it's doing to you, and knowing that there are a number of things that can turn that stuff off and and make you feel like you're normal. Um, so my goal in the near future is to do is to do some uh put all the research together and articulate it well so guys can understand what exactly is going on, and do it in a format like this, because most guys they read something and they turn it off. But if you have a format like this where they can actually hear all of these things and make sense about what's going on inside of them and what's gonna help them, uh, I think they'll listen to it.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, man. It's it's being able to listen to somebody from the community, from the boys, of the boys, from the boys, for the boys. It's important. Uh, guys, the people are out there, they want to get help. The link um, if you pause right now, go to the episode description, a link for uh Anthony's foundation will be there, a link to Millennium Health Server will be there, and uh I'll also put a link for Operator Syndrome because it it's it you're definitely included in that. Everybody that that's been the GWAT, took the fight to the enemy, and even our law enforcement guys, um, you're exposed to this and and you have to be willing to take the fight head on. It's your new mission. You want to be around for your wife, you want to be around for your kids, you want to be around for those grandkids. And the only way we keep more Americans like you in the fight next to us on that line is if we're all willing to get help. It's a little bit scary being vulnerable, but I'm telling you, you'll feel like a million bucks when you get to go to a treatment center where they treat you like a king and get you the help you deserve. You you're worth it. America owes it to you. And I'm so damn proud to have guys like like Anthony here doing this because we need more. We need more representation from the guys in this community. Anthony, as we close out, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, my email is anthony4dg uh. reboot at gmail.com. Uh email me. Um it's important that I get guys HBOT treatment. So I'm looking for boat operators, fast boat operators, soft guys want to go, or SF guys. Uh just reach out to me, man. I'll connect you with this clinic, and uh all you gotta do is get yourself there. The treatment is free. It's 60 hours, so you can do 80 hours, and uh it'll make a huge difference, man.

SPEAKER_02:

Here to hear, folks. Take care of yourself, be willing to go out there and get the help you deserve. Um, Anthony, thank you so much for being here, man. Thank you for what you're doing. And uh I am gonna be hopeful. I think you're gonna be around for a long time. I think this will be the first of many. I can't wait to have you back here in your mid-60s where you're still spry, full of energy, kicking ass, and uh with more optimism because we're gonna save some people. We're we're turning the tide in this thing. And uh for you guys listening, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for staying in the fight. Connect with somebody, reach out to your friends, your fellow veterans, and say what's up. Go grab a bite to eat. I'm Denny Caballero. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care. Thanks, brother.

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Deny Caballero

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