Special Ops & Psychedelic Medicine with Dr. Kris Hasenauer

Find Kris here: https://www.t1rx.com/

Mama Trauma kit: https://www.gorillaammo.com/product/gorilla-medical-mama-trauma-kit/ 

Kris is a board-certified physician assistant & graduated from the Army's Interservice Physician Assistant Program in 2014. He is a former Special Forces A-Team Member Medical Specialist (18D) & held multiple operational & medical advisory positions within the U.S. Special Operations Command since 2005.

T1Rx was born from the harshest environments on Earth—battlefields where the margin for error is zero. Our protocols were refined to keep warriors strong, sharp, and alive.

Now, we bring that same relentless standard to men who are fighting their own battles every day—at work, in the gym, at home, and in their heads.

We're not here to coddle. We’re here to calibrate.

To work with Erin, visit: https://heartwinghealing.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

And now here's your host, Erin Page.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Remedy Revolution podcast. My name is Erin and today's guest is rather unconventional for the podcast. So I am actually kind of excited about this to bring you something a little bit new, a little bit unique. I actually attended an event about firearms training, and I found it really interesting. And I ended up speaking with some people at a table called Gorilla Medical. We were talking about trauma kits primarily and ended up being introduced to today's guest through them. So I'm happy to welcome Dr. Chris Hasnauer to the show. He is with Gorilla Medical as well as his own company, Tier 1 or T1RX. Dr. Chris, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Hi, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

So let's kind of start off by telling tell the uh listeners a little bit about your background uh in medicine and kind of what brought you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Okay, so background in medicine, super interesting. So I joined the army um right after 9-11, January 2002, uh, right into special forces. Uh so I was first trip to Afghanistan was mid-2003 and basically have been doing that for 25 years. In that training, I was a 18 Delta, which is a Green Beret Special Forces medic. And I did that up until 2012, and then the Army saw fit to send me to PA school at their program in Texas called IPAP, which is the DOD's PA feeder program. Um, so I did that, and then when I finished that, I thought my special operations career was over and I was sorely mistaken. I was absorbed right back into special operations. Um, I was the like head special operations medical officer in Jordan for a year in Amman. I did some work with SOCOM in uh Washington, DC, joined Special Operations Command, worked with a lot of different three-letter agencies and kind of all over the world doing those things. And which was great. I mean, so it made me as far as trauma medicine goes, I'm in a lot of things gunfight medicine. I'm I'm kind of your guy. Like I've been doing that for a long, long time. Um and then when I left um active duty in 2019, I kind of started a started my own company and started a private security bodyguard contracting company, like every good Green Beret does, and then COVID happened, and that went sideways like very quickly. So I took the medical division of that company and started a company called Emerald Medical, which is now T1 Tier 1 or T1RX, and we were doing house call emergency room visits and sideline medicine for football and high school and college athletic programs that couldn't get medical providers during COVID and just kind of doing anything we could to stay open, really. And in that, I my own struggles with alcoholism, PTSD, suicide, all these different things just came roaring to a head, and I ended up having to go get treatment and all the things that go with that. Well, as a medical provider in treatment, I was like, man, I'm confused on what's happening. So I know the other patients are confused because I have a master's in this. I I do this for a living and I don't know what's going on. So I ended up going through that, and then what the big impetus that changed the whole course of the way I practiced medicine was I ended up going to a veteran's ayahuasca retreat. And for anybody that doesn't know, ayahuasca is a plant-based, naturally, you know, it's a leaf and a vine, and they put them together and it makes psychedelic, and we can get into the pharmacology of how that works a little bit, but it's basically gives you this psychedelic state and kind of whatever. Well, that was such a big turning point for me. And one that I had gotten to the point where I was laying out in the woods, puking my guts out with a bunch of hippies to to get through this, and then the profound PTSD remission and substance abuse remission that came with it. Like I was symptom-free for 120 days, which was mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

So then that kind of drove me into the behavioral health side, and I went and got my doctorate in behavioral medicine with concentration in psychedelic pharmacology. Specifically, all my research was in ketamine therapy, and I had started a ketamine protocol because I was like, man, if I had to get to this point, how can I get people away, you know, from that? And that so that drove that. In concurrence with all that happening, I was still running a tactical training company, I was still teaching people TAC Med. And so I had two like working arms of my career kind of going outside. So the company that I had, I had my own, like you said, I had the training piece. Well, about 18 months ago, Gorilla Ammunition Company absorbed our training in medical company, and we became Gorilla Medical, we're kind of a subsidiary of Gorilla. They're a partner, and what we do is they make very high-end firearms, all the stuff at Gorilla Property, they manufacture ammunition for the Department of War, they do all these things, and then we do any tactical medical training, any firearms training, and then we teach some counter-human trafficking, um, personal safety stuff as well.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Um yeah, so um, all right, let's go down the guerrilla road first. I do want to come back to this um PTSD and uh psychedelic medicine as well. So talking about um more of this emergency training, I always say, so I'm a holistic health practitioner and homeopath by trade, and but I always say, you know, please if if I you know cut my arm off, please take me to an emergency physician. I, you know, um I don't want to land in the hospital for any kind of chronic condition, but um, if it's something that's more emergent, then by all means, please um I defer to those particular experts. So um I uh I actually purchased um for those of you listening and are watching the video, um, the gorilla medical um I think it's the mom's kit is the one I got.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah, the mom and truly kit is the name of the police. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

And and I carry that in my car. And I think uh so many of our listeners are actually special needs parents. And so uh there can be a lot of trauma in that particular um population and um and and a lot of PTSD, but like I said, we'll get into that later. Um but when it comes to um you know on the spot trauma training, are there any tips for moms, especially um special needs moms who are caretaking for these children who uh can sometimes unfortunately become violent or self-indurous? Um what kinds of uh things might you offer to a mom who's in one of those situations where you know the access to uh some kind of expert isn't immediately available?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

So one of the things that we do is we do very, as far as medical training goes, I can feel very confident in our ability to take you from any level. We can take people that have never picked up or seen a tourniquet before, to we do some classes for ER doctors and PAs and those kind of things. So we can we can run the gamut of those things. What I say with that is no one rises to the occasion. That's a myth. You fall to the lowest, the you fall to the highest level of competency that you have. So what that means is get some training. And I like you know, if you guys start start with the Red Cross first aid class, sure, that's a that's a great starting point. It's also extremely cookie-cutter because it's built to mass produce the concept of doing something. And without training, people don't react. So that's the that's the one thing. Um and I think to do scenario-based training and the different things like that, that's very it's super important because taking a class, reading a book, and then doing the having it, you know, practicing in real life are not the same thing. They never are. And when you look at the special needs population, I did some work as a gymnastics coach for until I was 30 off and on. And I taught you know some special needs gymnastics, I was in have a teaching degree and some other things too. So I understand that I've some special needs patients in my practice, but what happens is like you said, those those those uh patients can be self-interest, those children can be self-interest, or you know, you're you're having the the the emotional reactions of a toddler from a grown-up, and then you can get injured, and there's all those pieces. So I think that getting good quality, you know, even even the idea of needing to do restraint training so that you can treat them and not injure them to do that. I mean, that's that's all important stuff. And and how does that happen? How do you keep yourself safe? And I and we offer those things. I mean, that's actually we should actually talk about that. We can probably set something up where we build a class around your your peep, your viewership and organizations and build something directly related to that. Um, but there's because yeah, I think it's yeah, definitely training.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Absolutely, it's definitely something that's needed. You know, I I think you know, we get um as as parents, um, we get really um bogged down with all of the biomedical stuff and all of the um implementation kinds of things and the therapies. And um this is often something that really gets quite overlooked and then we become um pretty helpless in these real emergent kinds of situations. Um, so I think that's incredibly important is understanding that you know it is uh imperative that as a caretaker of a child with special needs that you understand how to safely assist your child in those kinds of scenarios so that your child is safe first and foremost, and so that everyone around them is safe as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Absolutely. And the thing that kind of comes into these scenarios is trauma kind of trumps everything, right? So you can have all of these other conditions that you know you may that may be related to these patients, these children, that trauma becomes foremost in the because that's the thing that's gonna kill you now.

unknown 11:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

That's why we have to address that. So we look at we look at trauma and we break it down. We're like, is it gonna kill me in two minutes? Is it gonna kill me in 20 minutes? Is it gonna kill me in two days? Like, you break it down into how dangerous it is and how how you should train on it, right? Like, so your your example that Mama Trauma kid there, I mean, it's got some significant bleed stop stuff in it because if you cut the right thing, you'll bleed out in two or three minutes. So we get, you know, and then the average 911 response time in the United States is about eight and a half minutes. So you should uh address that.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Well, and I think the vast majority of people might have a first aid kit, however, they often don't know what to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Absolutely. And and the other thing is a lot of times what's sold as a first aid kit is just like what I would call like for boo-boos and owes, right? Like it's a it's some neosporin and a pack of Tylenol and some bandages, a little bit of gauze. That's that's not necessarily first aid for a traumatic emergency.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Right, right, absolutely. Okay, so um I do want to talk significantly about um PTSD. Like I said, so many parents are uh in this scenario, primarily because of situations that I just described, um, where they feel that they are in very significant PTSD. And in fact, it is often uh compared to uh combat veterans. So special needs parents and combat veterans do have this in common very often. So going into psychedelic medicine, I know that a lot of this is controversial, um, obviously, because you go into an altered state. Um for somebody uh who has not necessarily wanted to explore that um for fear of you know um where it might take them, um, for example, um what might you first uh suggest that they look at or understand?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Okay, so I think before you go down that the psychedelic speech, you kind of have to understand what PTSD is. Sure. So PTSD is a physiological response to a traumatic event. PTS um or um you know, uh acute stress reaction after a traumatic event is normal for six months. Like the symptoms of PTSD after an event, you know, nightmares, hypervigilance, these different things, those are not abnormal for up to six months because your body's processing your mind and your body, and like all the things that go in there. After six months, without therapy, or if you haven't addressed it, it's getting worse or things are getting better, then we start to go down the thing, okay, it's gonna be disorder, and what does that do? What does that mean? Is it affecting your quality of life? Right? That's that's kind of what we're looking at. How is it affecting you? What is it doing to your quality of life? So, physiologically, what happens? You have a traumatic event, and the amygdala, which is the fear center of your brain, so you get your like front of your brain, and your brain, all you know, the emotional part of your brain, all these different parts of your brain, then you have your amygdala down the brainstem. The amygdala is the fear center, and the reason that people have like what's considered a flashback, and most people don't have like movie flashbacks like are portrayed there, it's like a feeling or an emotion or like uh an overwhelming, like it's happening right now. Well, that's because that part of your brain is below the part of your brain that perceives time. So it's it hasn't hit that part yet. So when you have these fragments, they get stuck in the amygdala, which is essentially like it's happening now. And this memory is kind of staying almost in short-term memory instead of converting to long-term memory where you can process and work through it. So that's a oversimplified version of what's happening, but that's kind of the gist of it. So then we look at that and we're like, all right, what do we need to do to address that? Well, first and foremost is talk therapy, is processing, right? It's is how do we break these things down? What can we do to do that, right? And so maybe you need some like stuff for acute stuff for sleep and these different things, but it's a processing component and and working through it. And then we get there, and like, okay, so then you get to the point where the processing's not working, you've done all of the things, whatever, whatever those may be. And you know, psychedelics are not necessarily a last resort, but they are a very specific, powerful tool to treat it. And all you're doing, any therapy, all therapy, all therapies, all therapy for behavioral health is about neuroplastic change. Can you develop neuroplastic change to achieve an end state that is an improvement? Because there's no cures in behavioral health. This is a healing process, and that implies active engagement by the patient. So as we go down that, we're like, all right, so you have this, and you've you've done talk therapy, you've maybe done some EMDR, some acupuncture, you know, whatever, whatever that may be for you, right? There's all those things work together, they all have their place. I've done all of them, they're they're all have their place. Psychedelics are like, if we need to break something down to the foundation to fix it, we kind of push it down to the foundation and we remodel the house. And that's what it does. Now, here's the interesting thing about psychedelics the trippy psychedelic part isn't really the part that's making you get better. That's like a Bob Ross happy side effect. Like you get to go do it, you have your grateful dead concerts in your head, and off you go. But what really getting out of it is this huge neuroplastic event where your brain becomes almost childlike again. When you were a little kid, you would look up in the clouds and you see shapes and bunnies, and you played for 10, and you were a princess, you built a fort, and all these things, right? And then at some point you stopped doing that. Why did we stop doing that? Because our brains became less neuroplastic, we became more serious about adulthood and cars and changing tires and relationships and taking care of babies and whatever that was, and we we lost neuroplasticity. Well, when we give someone psychedelics, one of the things we do is we turn on all of that neuroplasticity again for a finite amount of time. Well, then if we take you in this hypo neur hyperneuroplastic state and you do talk therapy, it works exponentially better. And then we do another treatment and it works better and better and better.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Okay, so I know that there are many different uh psychedelics that are being utilized in this format. Um and just anecdotally, so uh I haven't shared this with our listeners before, but um I had heard about IBegain and was listening to um somebody talk about that and called up a facility to just kind of get some more information and see. Now their recommendation for me was that um it probably wasn't the right fit because I didn't have experience with psychedelics previously. So to me, um that actually brought up a little bit of fear because then I felt like, okay, well, you know, I I don't know exactly what this is gonna do to me. And um so I guess my question is, is this something unique to that specific treatment with ibogaine? Or is that is there like a gateway uh kind of a pathway to get there right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So that was kind of my what and why I do what I do, because that was my conclusion from ultimately the ayahuasca experience, is like you have to get to a place where this is your option. Right. And so in the in the construct of what they are, so in most well, all of the psychedelics that I do in my office are ketamine-based. And the reason for that is ketamine is schedule three, very, very safe medication. Um in the it and super old. So ketamine's been around since 1947. Like it was kind of it's been around for a long, long time. Um, so there it was a it is a surgical anesthetic, is what it was originally designed for, right? Well, when you have anesthesia, if you're gonna get surgery, you want a few things. You want pain control, ketamine's great for that. You want amnesia, ketamine's great for that, and you want muscle relaxation, ketamine is not great for that because it does not suppress your respiratory drive, your muscles don't relax. You you do, but they don't. Like you still have autonomic control, like your body doesn't need support, right? Like or when you're on ketamine. When you go on to other anesthetics, propofol or some of these other things, that they they watch you like you're they're taking over respirations, you're doing these things because you want the body so relaxed so you can do surgery. Now, we use ketamine on children all the time because their muscles are so small we just move out of the non-respiratory drop where that doesn't affect their respiratory drive and just fight the muscles to do the procedures than it is to do the other, right? A couple other things like can't really get you can't get addicted to ketamine, it doesn't work that way. And then they talk about people that have overdosed on ketamine, you know, you know Matthew Perry, the guy, what is it the guy from Friends, right? This is always this is in the news about that. Well, he didn't die from taking ketamine. I mean, he died because he took ketamine, he didn't overdose on it, he went swimming. Right and drowned. Right? It's a tragedy, but at the end, you're not he was abusing the drug, not using for its intended purpose. Right? So any drug, don't care what it is, you want the lowest possible dose with the least amount of side effects to get the desired in state. If you go past that, you're misusing the drug. That's uh that's the whole thing, right? So, yes, so ketamine is uh very fast, very rapidly metabolized. Like the uh ketamine treatment in my office for behavioral health from the time the medicine starts to the time it's over is 45 minutes. Like exactly. They come in, we run it for 45 minutes. I know that that IV is gonna be the last drop of that IV will go into your arm. In 45 minutes. Ten minutes after that, you'll wake up. Right? And we use it because of its efficacy of safety. It's been around for a long time. And now for behavioral health, you're using ketamine off label. Right? So, but off-label doesn't mean illegal, it just means that it's not designed for that. But here's the here's the rub that kind of nobody talks about the time off-label. You can't re-patent ketamine. There's no money to research it. So any research done on it and off book says you can't repatent it because it's so old. So big pharma can't make any money off of it. So then they make spermata, which is S- ketamine. Okay, well, basic chemistry, S-ketamine just means it's the left side of ketamine. Well, that is the bioactive side of ketamine. All ketamine is S-ketamine. So all they did was cut it in half, put an inert carbon on it, and say, okay, it's $1,200 a spray. I think that's okay, cool. You did that, but anybody can just go and use ketamine to do the exact same thing at a fraction of the cost. Um so there's that. So that's why we use that. It is Schedule 3, it is clinically available, it has lots of research about its side effects, its efficacy, and like how we got there to use it, right? Now, other medications. Psilocybin is approved for which is the active psychedelic in mushrooms. Psilocybin is approved for um breakthrough depression. And certain, you know, there are ways to acquire it and get clinical psilocybin treatments for refractory depression. You can do that. That's an FDA program that's currently running. Um they are reevaluating the use of LSD and changing the way that it works. Uh, they actually make plant-based LSDs now and they are shorter acting. Um, there's a medication that's it's not even a it's an experimental medication or something that's been designed called um JRT, which is a non-psychedelic LSD. It just causes the neuroplastic effects without any of the psychedelic piece. Because ultimately you're looking for the neuroplastic effects. So there's companies that are developing what's called neuroplastigens to achieve that. Then you have your ayahuasca and your kind of and your ibogaine, which are your plant-based indigenous culture, more ceremonial things, and they've been around for thousands of years. You know, even the idea of like what ayahuasca is, like you take a look at ayahuasca. So ayahuasca is a compound that you take it out of a plant and it makes something called a DMT. And they give you exogenous DMT, and DMT is referred to as the soul molecule. You kind of metabolize when you're waking up from a dream and you're remembering your weird dreams, that's the DMT metabolizing in your brain. So every living cell, every living thing on the planet makes DMT. Everything makes some level of DMT. And then the other part of that plant is an MAOI inhibitor. And MAOI inhibitors were the original antidepressants. Because what they do is they stop the breakdown of your happy chemicals, your dopamine, your serotonin, your DMT, they slow the breakdown of it so that it stays in your system longer, so you maintain those effects, right? Those two things make sense. Well, if I give you extra DMT, you're gonna have a psychedelic experience. And when I add another thing that slows the breakdown of it, you're gonna have that psychedelic experience for about four hours. But if I just gave you the DMT, it would be like 90 seconds, it'd be over. Your brain would just burn through it. That's and that's how that's how ayahuasca particularly works. Ibogaine is somewhat similar. Um and they and they and all but all of the things, all psychedelics, cause hyperneuroplasticity. They turn your whole brain on and parts of your brain that wouldn't normally talk to each other, talk to each other. So it's like it's kind of like opening a word file in Excel. It's gonna open, it's gonna be all jacked up and jumbly, right? So, like when you're when you're uh seeing sounds and tasting colors, it's just that the connection from your ear instead of just going to the auditory cortex, it's going to the taste cortex of your brain, and your taste cortex can only turn it into taste. If it, if you're you know, seeing the music beat, it's because it's coming for audio cortex going to your visual cortex, where your visual cortex can only turn it into a visual representation. Your brain is a chemical computer. That's all it is.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Well, and I can certainly attest to that. So a couple years ago, I went to a uh a retreat with Dr. Judges Spenza where we did these meditations. It was over 40 hours of meditation throughout the week. So we're talking about, you know, really extensive long time in meditation. And um there was one particular meditation we did where um we were encouraged to uh physiologically attempt to create DMT. And um during that meditation or immediately after that meditation, I think we went to lunch and I had attended with my friend Ashley and we sat we sat down at lunch and we were laughing hysterically. Like it, I mean, I swear I was high in that moment because um, you know, I really do feel like I had created a significant amount of DMT in my system just via um that meditative process. So um, you know, from that perspective, I think, you know, there is possibility that we can heal ourselves through these kinds of um practices as well. But certainly um probably it takes a lot longer. It takes a lot of dedication um and um probably not as long-lasting, but um maybe you could kind of speak to that.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

So I've I've done that as well, the meditative um breathe breath work exercises, and 100% I have had absolutely psychedelic experience from doing that. That's a 100% thing. Um, but yeah, you're right. I mean, it takes you 45 minutes to an hour of working through it to get into the that trance like state to get there and do it. And it is absolute practice, it is it is dedication. And just in Western modern culture, we don't have it. We don't have the time. And that that's what it comes down to. I mean, you think about all the other stuff. I mean, we got signals and radio waves and all the things that are bouncing off us and the stimuli and all the things that are just in our purview. Okay, so if you want to so going kind of down that rabbit hole a little bit, just looking at the idea of ketamine, right? So the way ketamine works is you have glutamate, which is an excitatory chemical in your brain, and you have GABA, which is a calming chemical in your brain. And ketamine, or pretty much all psychedelics of four fashion, but ketamine, particularly, shakes glutamate off its receptors, like you're shaking the berries or apples off of a tree, and it is flooding your brain. So the psychedelic effect is all of that glutamate hitting your brain, like bam, here we go, right? And it's all just connecting everything. Well, GABA calms everything down. There's another interesting uh working theory that GABA is your body's and your brain's filter, so that you know, the uh of the I'll actually email you the article, it's super interesting. But basically, the gentleman's talking and saying, okay, well, when you're receiving signals, glutamate's receiving, and that you're you're you're all everything that's around you is coming in. So that when you're having a psychedelic experience, it's like you're not seeing things that aren't there, it's just your filters off. Right? So, like all that stuff, all those signals, all those things you're just perceiving them in a way that your brain would typically filter it out. And it's an interesting theoretical model, and it's all that but if GABA is doing that, then like, okay, then all the stuff's out there. Well, when you talk about all that stimuli, I mean, you look at it, you just look at like food or electronics, like all those things are out there. I mean, think about seven years old, and like my childhood, you know, it's like I had an Atari and I played outside. Right? There's no cell phone, there's no that stuff, you know, four or five radio stations, you have to turn the channel on the TV, there's no cable, all that stuff, and then you're like, how much extra stuff is out there that is just affecting brains and all that stuff? That is absolutely real. So what do you know, what do we do about that? And where are we looking at users?

SPEAKER_03 30:18

So many kids, too, that um, you know, on the autism spectrum or with ADHD have excessive amounts of glutamate. So they have all of these external stimuli coming in, massive production of glutamate that we supplement a lot of times with GABA, trying to calm them down a little bit. So um, you know, I I do think that it's hugely important to understand that that balance and um, you know, where it's coming from environmentally, and how do we how do we not only um you know manually uh adjust like by supplementation with GABA, but are there other ways that we can um bring the body back into a state of balance so that we're not um experiencing those kinds of, you know, it in my opinion, ADHD is just an imbalance and it's imbalance of lots of things coming in and too many um too uh too many excitatory components that um our brain just can't uh handle the sheer volume and focus in on one particular thing, for example.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Absolutely. I mean it's a it's like a sympathetic nervous system hijacked by environmental stimuli. And when you can downregulate and engage the parasympathetic nervous system and do those things, you get symptom improvement. I mean you take a kid with ADHD out of the woods and you take all the stuff away and you just gonna play their they're way better. Always like you just they just want to go get all that stuff out. And when we so it's like, how do you find the right the right balance? And that's again, that kind of goes back to just medicine in general. Like somewhere down the line, the idea of do no further harm turned into do not get sued and do a cookie cutter approach to every patient, and people are not cookie cutter. Our experiences are different, our needs are different, our just our genetic, just the genetic diversity of everybody. Like as we get into the you know, genetics testing and looking at even like supplementation and pharmaceuticals and like genetically how you process it, all those things, like there's a massive shift in the way that people can be taken. Even if you look at like the idea of like a maha and the way that the the medicine is going now. I mean, I I personally think it's great because I we allopathic medicine has this horrible thing of of just making the assumption that your patients are idiots, and that's not the case. Like the patient is gonna know more about your condition than the doctor is most of the time because that's what they deal with every day. Like that's their life. Like, of course they're gonna know everything there is to know about it. Now, does it have its place? Yeah, but I think that like you have to like one of the things. So I I did some work in the intelligence community and doing Green Bray stuff way before I was doing medicine, and I use more of that work just talking to people and understanding and listening to information more in my practice than I do anything else, you know. Like, it's just like what's going on with you? Let's talk about it, and then we figure it out because there's there's always a thing that that there's always a piece of the puzzle that you can find and you can add, and the the patient or the parent is gonna have more information than you are. So that's you always have to deal with that.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Well, okay, so that kind of leads me into a question about, you know, I think too often we piecemeal things out, you know, we've gone to specialization at the expense of so many patients because now we have, okay, you need to go to the cardiologist and you need to go to the endocrinologist and you need to go, you know, and and oftentimes there's not even anybody overseeing um the patient and their overall care, right? Even general practitioners are, you know, burnt out, they don't have the time to uh to manage um you know every single patient's care outside of their own office. And so um we often put um mental health or behavioral health in a completely separate bucket than we do physical health. And I think a lot of times um to the detriment of the patient, because you know, um yes, there there might be some things that are happening for that particular patient mentally and emotionally and spiritually, and and those things are very often not recognized by say a general practitioner who is focused on, you know, what are your symptoms, um, and you know, GI symptoms or headaches or whatever, and they don't correlate any of those things to what's happening within that person's life. So tell me a little bit about where you see um more of an integrative approach because it does sound to me like we're on the same page when it comes to that kind of thinking and um where you see the future of um medical practice.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

So my practice, uh tier one, we are completely integrative. Um we have therapists on staff, like we offer it is it is um primary care, behavioral health. Really, because of most of my patients, like of about 3,000 patients, I'd say 75 to 80 percent of our veterans and first responders, um, or even active duty military, um, all that stuff. So we're looking at trying to keep people at the top of their physical gain. That's the that's the people that we're we're dealing with, right? But at the same time, that behavioral health component is such a huge, you know, like the idea of what's going on in your life, right? Because people people will say the thing, oh, it's all in your head. That doesn't mean it's not real. Your brain can cause so many symptoms. Well, even one of the things we do, like we do uh treatment for like phantom limb pain for amputees and these different things and migraines in different ways, and we'll we'll evaluate them and we'll run them through this process, and it's like, okay, like my my goal with every patient that comes into my office is to take them off every medication that they're on if I can. That's what I try to do with every single patient. And I'm pretty like well, everybody that knows me will tell you this, but I am super blunt. And there's some patients that don't like that, and I'm not if you don't like that, I'm not your guy. Because if you got something wrong with you, I will tell you. And it's that's why you came, that's why you're paying me. You you know, you don't go to the mechanic, like, yeah, that tire's okay. You know, you want the guy to tell you your tires can go fly, right? So those are the those are things I work, like I kind of work around. Like I do um exercise, diet, coaching, um all the uh all the behavioral health specialists you find, like the one that will fit. Because here's the thing with anything in behavioral health, like a little crass statement, I'd say a lot in terms of a lot of packets, but like therapists and doctors are like strippers and bartenders, you gotta find one you can work with. Like you just like right, like they are. I mean, it's it's exactly what it is because if you're if they're not if there's not a uh understanding of like your goals, and and and then and that's also the patient has to be an active participant. Like you can't come in and ask for the advice and then not take any of it and come back, I nothing changed. Well, did you change anything? Do anything I said, right? But the other piece is you also want to look at a patient and say, hey, let's do this and have a discharge plan. Like, what is the plan to take you, get you better, and teach you the tools to maintain this on your own? Like, I'm I'm not completely anti-Ozimpic or GLP1, but what I am is like taking somebody and saying, All right, you're gonna take this drug for the rest of your life to stay skinny. It's like, why don't you eat a salad and go for a walk? If we need to do this for 12 or 20 weeks, let's do that and get 40 or 50 pounds off you so that you can go do these other things, but like don't do that. I'm the you know, I'm the same way with ADHD meds and benzodiazepines. The goal is like take you off of everything. I mean, I have taken people off hundreds of patients off like chronic anxiety meds and all these things with a couple ketamine with a you know ketamine treatment cycle and a medical marijuana card. Like, it's like, hey, this is this is better for you than this thing that if you have withdraws from it, you could die. Like, that's not a good that's not a good answer. So I and there's there's a mix of all of it. I mean, there's you know, homeopathic eastern medicine, the idea of that there's a place for that. Half the world uses it. We've seen it work. It's just we don't accept it here in the in the US because it's just not how it's not how the insurance company gets paid. That's the bottom line. Like it's if the insurance well, you're talking about like the primary care specialist thing. That doesn't have anything to do with the doctors, that's the billing in the administration. They're like, oh, if you see this, you're referring this out. It's like primary care, your primary care doctor can handle 70 to 80 percent of the stuff that you come in there for. They just don't because the hospital can bill four times as much for you to go see the specialist. And that's the that's the insanity of it all.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Yeah, it's a real sad state of affairs. I know so um many of my patients struggle with neuroimmune disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders, and so um the cascade of interventions when it comes to the antipsychotics and the uh antidepressants and all of these kinds of interventions. What's always bothered me about that is that there is never an exit strategy. It is uh maybe a lateral shift to a different drug. Um, but a lot of times even if they do those shifts, they'll keep the patient on both. And so then I get kids who come in and kids, I'm talking about, you know, the young kids on, you know, five different mind-altering medications. And I'm like, I don't know what it's doing what at this point. I don't know if this is a side effect of the drug or if this is an actual behavior. Um, you know, I don't know if this is a physiological symptom or if it is again a side effect of one of these drugs or the combination of the drugs. So um I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you handle those kinds of situations, particularly because I would imagine um many of the combat vets that come into you are um also have been on that same roller coaster.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Oh yeah, the polyfarm roller coaster. So and that kind of goes with the VA and the the different ways that that the not I I mean preface this is I know a lot of good people that work for the VA, but a system, and I'm getting going into that, is that a system that's designed to help everyone ultimately helps no one because you're half-assing everything, right? Or you have so many patients, you're so inundated, you're just trying to do something and not necessarily able to do the best thing. When somebody comes in like that, like I SSRIs are like SSRIs and benzodiazepines are just like, why in the world is every single veteran on these? You know, it's like, oh, they're this, and take this and this. It's like, okay, well, here's a drug, you take SSRIs, for example. Here's a drug that you're gonna get fat, you're not gonna have an orgasm, and you're gonna not feel feelings. Good luck, right? Like those are and just and put them on them, and like, oh, that one's not working good. Go on another one, exactly what you're talking about. And you you have to walk these things down, but the thing that you come into is you're walking down and you're doing that washout period, and you're like, all right, we have to see how you are at baseline. So those patients, I will see them every week. And then when we first started, I may even see them twice a week, but we'll see them every week, even if it's just telehealth. They check in and be like, all right, look, we're gonna lower your dose again, and we'll kind of wash it out and we'll say, okay. But the thing that comes out of that is all of those bottled up emotions, those things that were stagnant, they're gonna come out and they're gonna be raw, like when you scrape your leg and the nerves hurt, and you've got road rash and it scabs and it itches and then slowly heals. Like, you're going through that same thing emotionally, mentally. Like everything is raw. So you're like, oh, it's not working. It's like you got to give it some time. Get in there, get continual therapy through that process, have somebody you can talk to, make a solid plan because once they get through that acute phase of the washout, and you're kind of looking at other things, you're like, okay, instead of doing that, let's try some exercise, let's try this, let's do this. And you can go in and you will see absolutely moving office is literally the day, but I mean, I have cards and letters and all these things like all over the place because it's like you know, this stuff works, you get them, you get their humanity back, and that's what kind of goes away. And you see the same thing in kids. I'm I don't I don't see it as much. I I'm my my pediatrics piece is pretty small. I mean, I take pediatrics, but I don't do a ton of heat stuff, but um even the kids like that you see come in and they're like, oh, teacher said they need HD meds, it's like just a kid, man. Like, don't it just maybe a little extra time on a test and longer recess. Let's start with that. And those those pieces of it, as you as you unravel the stuff, then you can kind of get to the root cause of the problem. And even with PTSD, and I find it a lot in vets, but like the vets and then other things too, but like the thing that they think is the problem is never actually the problem. Like it's like, oh, this event happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this was really terrible. And it's like, okay, well, let's deal with that. But then they deal with it, they've worked for that process, and they're not better. I was like, well, let's talk about childhood. Let's talk about this, let's talk about that. And it's an easy thing. And the other thing that happens with PTSD and even kids is you get people that start to identify as their behavioral health diagnosis and becomes their identity. And when that happens, you got a whole other bunch of things to unravel. But we don't say, you know, we say, um, you know, I'm bipolar, I am depressed, I am, and you we attach that to our identity. We don't say I am a broken leg. We don't say I am cancer. Why do we attach behavioral health conditions to our identity? And that's a that's a weird sociological thing to me.

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Yeah, you're just trying to get a nerve with me. That's one of my huge pet peeves. It really frustrates me when uh people talk about their diagnoses and uh as if personified, right? And and um it makes me as a clinician very reluctant to give somebody a diagnosis because I don't want them to attach to that, like, okay, you're experiencing X, X, and Y symptoms. Okay, fine. Um, but uh to put a label on it often can be really detrimental uh to a patient who's looking to cling to something um in order to provide an explanation. Um and and unfortunately, it often backfires from my experience.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

And and I and I I think it does. And I think that again, like, and that's the other thing too, is like I fire patients all the time. And because, like I said, like if it's not a working relationship, then why are you here? You know, that's the thing, like on both parties, like mine and theirs. It's like if it's not conducive to what we're trying to achieve, what are we doing here? And I'm not saying that I'm the be all and all master of medicine, I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that I got a pretty good understanding of it, and I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty confident I can help you, but it's the help me help you. Like, this isn't I'm not picking on you, I'm not mad at you, I'm just telling you, this is what's wrong, this is the steps to fix it. I can't do it for you. And those are those are hard things. They're hard things for a lot of people. I mean, I have I have a lot of vets like that, I have a lot of you know, other patients like that because they're just like they want that difference, right? They're like we have we have trained people sociologically that everything can be cured, and what we took out of that is that healing is an active participation by the patient to engage in the healing process with the guidance of their provider, right? Yeah, that's how you get better. Almost nothing is cured. We have cases where we've cured cancer, we can cure an earache, we can do these things, and that means that the patient bears no responsibility for what happened to them. But behavioral health, particularly, is not like that. Orthopedic injuries are not like that. Like, we're not gonna cure your broken leg if you keep trying to drag it around, you know, like we're not gonna heal it if you like it doesn't get cured. You have to actively engage in the healing process.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Right. Yeah, I had a mentor once who would say, I can't do your push-ups for you. You know, you you have to be actively involved, you have to be the one um creating healing in your body. You know, I can be uh a guide, I can be a teacher, I can be a mentor, I can do everything within my power to assist you, but you have to participate.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

And then we've we've proven that that's real. I mean, the placebo effect proves that. If you believe something will cure you, if you give someone aspirin and their condition goes away because they believe that you gave them whatever, then that obviously the medication didn't do that. I mean, that's the that's how it works, right? So when you take people that are actively engaged in all components of it, you're like, all right, here's what we're trying to do, you know, or like, all right, we know that you have to be on this medication because XYZ happened to you and this doesn't work anymore. And it's nothing we can do to fix that, but we can do all these other things and then keep you only on one medication instead of 20, or you know, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_03 48:35

Yeah, 100%. I couldn't agree more. All right, Dr. Chris, I ask every single one of our guests eight rapid fire questions, and those questions are designed to get us a little bit more information about who you are and what makes you tick. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 48:54

I'm ready.

SPEAKER_03 48:55

All right, first one. If you could choose only one natural remedy for the rest of your life, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Exercise.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

All right, number two, tell us something most people don't know about you.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

I did ballet when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Wow, me too. All right, number three, if I were to compile a playlist of happy music, what song would you suggest be added? No woman, no crime about four, what is your favorite guilty pleasure?

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Chocolate, because I don't drink anymore.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

What is the most influential book you've ever read?

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Um currently I would say it's Man Search for Meaning by Victor Franklin.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

All right, number six, what does the word revolution mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 49:59

As a green beret, job security.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

Oh no. All right. Number seven, what does the word remedy mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Active participation to solve a problem.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

All right. Number eight, if you could impart one piece of wisdom onto our listeners, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Trust your gut.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

Yeah, always. Always trust your gut. All right. Dr. Chris Hasnauer, please uh let our listeners know where they might find you and how they might find out more information about all of your uh endeavors.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

All right, to get a hold of me, you can just go to t1rx.com, you can message us, all our contact information, social medias are there. T1RX, that's our new website for Tier 1 Medical Group. And we are in Bureau Beach, Florida. And if you want any training med kits, anything like that, you can go to Gorilla Ammo, um, find on the medical tab, and just drop down the website. You can find us there. Um we do anybody from you just tag that, and anybody from our training or medical community will get back in touch with you.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you all for listening, and we will see you all next time. Take care.