Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is presented by The Mac Parkman Foundation
The mission of this show and the foundation is To serve as a source of information, resources, and communications to the community of parents, coaches/Athletic trainers, medical staff, and athletes that are affected by sports-related concussions and to raise awareness of the long-term implications of concussive and sub-concussive trauma to our children.
Broken Brains will also explore how Concussive Trauma impacts our Service Members and Veterans.
Join us every week as Bruce interviews leaders and experts in various Medical fields, as well as survivors of Concussive trauma.
Produced by Security Halt Media
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Dino Garner : The Truth About PTSD, Brain Trauma & Why Mental Health Needs a Scientific Revolution
In this groundbreaking episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, host Bruce Parkman sits down with author, scientist, and veteran advocate Dino Garner to expose what’s really happening inside the brains of those affected by repetitive trauma, PTSD, and invisible injuries.
Dino brings a rare combination of military experience and scientific expertise to the table, challenging outdated mental health treatments and urging a shift in focus toward the molecular and neurological roots of trauma—particularly neuroinflammation. He explains why so many veterans and athletes are suffering in silence and how science can light a path toward healing.
They also explore the financial barriers to care, the societal disconnect around brain health awareness, and the emerging role of AI in therapy. Dino makes a powerful case for holistic, science-backed solutions—and calls on listeners to advocate for change in the way we treat and talk about brain injuries.
🧠 This is more than a conversation—it's a call to action. Tune in for a raw, insightful, and thought-provoking dialogue that will reshape how you think about mental health, trauma, and healing.
🎧 Like, Share, Subscribe, and Follow on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts to be part of the movement for change in brain health advocacy.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Repetitive Brain Trauma
02:58 Dino Garner's Journey: From Science to Military Service
05:58 The Intersection of Science and Military Experience
08:50 Advocacy for PTSD and Mental Health Awareness
11:54 Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries
14:48 Challenging Conventional Mental Health Approaches
18:04 The Molecular Basis of Mental Health Issues
21:01 The Role of Neuroinflammation in Mental Health
23:55 Changing Perspectives on PTSD Treatment
27:02 The Importance of Storytelling in Healing
29:59 Conclusion and Call to Action
35:22 Understanding the Brain's Processing of Information
36:48 Changing Beliefs Through Chemistry
38:13 The Battle Against Established Medical Norms
39:39 The Importance of Holistic Approaches
41:03 Challenges in Brain Health Diagnosis and Treatment
43:37 The Role of Data in Changing Perspectives
45:54 Advocacy and the Power of Education
48:49 The Rise of AI in Therapy and Companionship
50:48 The Financial Burden of Brain Health Solutions
52:54 Authenticity in Advocacy
56:38 The Disconnect in American Society
58:33 The Need for Collective Awareness and Action
https://www.mpfact.com/headsmart-app/
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LinkedIn: Dino Garner
Produced by Security Halt Media
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Broken Brains with your host, bruce Parkman, from the Mack Parkman Foundation, here in Anna Marie Island, florida. Hosted by the Mack Parkman Foundation, we talk about the issue of repetitive brain trauma and the form of repetitive head impacts from contact sports and repetitive blast exposure with our military service members, and what these conditions and phenomena are doing to the brains of our veterans, kids and athletes, resulting in the largest preventable cause of mental illness in this country. Why is this important? Because this is not trained in our nursing, medical or psychological communities and that makes you, the parent, the patient, the player responsible to understand these issues. So we reach out to doctors and advocates and players and researchers and everybody we can to give you that 360-degree perspective on this issue so you can protect those that you love.
Speaker 1:On our show today, an amazing guest and we probably just blew through 15 minutes of content getting on here. Well, let's dig into this gentleman man. Dino Garner is a distinguished author, scientist, army veteran and advocate for mental health and veteran reintegration. His career bridges military service, scientific innovation, creative arts and trauma recovery. He was raised in Europe, born in the great state of Texas, and Dino embodies a rare blend of intellect, grit and compassion. He enlisted in the United States Army at 35, becoming the oldest recruit in the 75th Ranger Regiment, and served with the 1st Ranger Battalion, completing over 220 missions with a civilian special operations unit where he's overseen. That in itself, we could talk about an hour on right there.
Speaker 1:He's also a scientific researcher. He's the first to successfully culture shark cells and conducted original research in electroreception and neural memory storage. He's a PTSD advocate and veteran support specialist. He's led initiatives to address PTSD through storytelling, mentorship and reintegration services, and he's focused on community building for high-risk veterans, which we desperately need in this country. Oh wait, a minute, there's more. He's a specialist in publishing and photography. He revolutionized jewelry photography, capturing 40% of the US market Amazing, Don't even know what that is yet. But he's also noted for photographing silicone breast implants using FDA hearings.
Speaker 1:Nicknamed the Billion Dollar man and probably one of the most read books by the US military I might have seen it myself. Probably one of the most read books by the US military I might have seen it myself. And he's a New York Times best-selling ghostwriter and editor of over 50-plus books. And he co-authored Aeromasters, Celebrating a Century of American Fighter Pilot, a three-volume tribute described as a literary and visual masterpiece. This gentleman is out of control. I run into a lot of people in my life and if you're going to stuff a lot into 60-something-plus years, I think this gentleman has done it. Dino, welcome to the show, sir. It's a pleasure having you on board. Thank you, Bruce, Much appreciated. All right, You're 35 years old, right? Are you a civilian and you just decided to join the United States Army? Or what was going on and you just decided to join the United?
Speaker 2:States Army. What was going on? Well, it goes back to ninth grade, when I was 15. And my dear brother, john, who was into lists. He said, dino, you need to make a list. And John loved making lists about mowing the lawn, getting things clean and all. And when he said that I said okay.
Speaker 2:I had just finished reading a couple of books and I was very, very influenced by stories, peter Benchley's Jaws. It made me want to be a marine biologist, matt Hooper. Unfortunately, in the book he gets eaten by the shark. I waited for the movie to come out and lo, he survived. So I said, yeah, I want to be that guy. I want to study shark biology. I wasn't sure exactly what, but some kind of shark biology.
Speaker 2:And I read Dogs of War by Frederick Forsythe and I said I want to be some kind of merc in Africa. I don't want to go kill people indiscriminately, but I'd like to kill some bad guys. So I kept that on the back burner. Go kill people indiscriminately, but I like to kill some bad guys. So I kept that on the back burner. And then wanted to be an airborne ranger, cause my father, when he was in Vietnam, he was an F4, f4 driver, flying missions over wherever, and he used to send me these stars and stripes, articles about the long, 75th, long range reconnaissance. And I said I want to be like one of those guys. I want to be an airborne ranger and I also want to be a neuro L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L.
Speaker 2:I wanted to figure those out because I know it wasn't an idiot they were, but I wasn't and I wanted to learn everything that I could about neurobiology and behavior. Now, of course neurobiology that term hadn't been invented back then 1974. But so I made that life plan and I just checked off the blocks as I went along. I had actually flunked out of college my first year, so I was not a model student. In fact I spent more time drinking beer than reading books, although I loved reading and I spent a lot of time doing research in books. And so I came back home to Maryland at that time and went to a community college and got the grades up and got a scholarship to American University in DC. And I was just happy as a clam because I was now on my own and I knew what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:And I found my first passion in cell culture because I was working at NIH. I kind of found. I didn't find it. I made my own job at NIH after walking into a couple of virology labs, people who had been studying the effects of viruses on human cells, and they taught me how to do cell culture in general. So I just went back and said I want to combine that with fish cell culture. So I, with the help of some guys up at Kearneysville, west Virginia it was a USDA, I think, or no Fish and Wildlife Service guys who were culturing cells, so they gave me about a two-hour lecture on what to do. The guys at NIH schooled me for about a day and then I took all that I learned back to American University and over a period of two years I finally got it right and developed the first shark cell culture. Now that's significant because it had never been done before for one. And people were hypothesizing that because sharks are completely cartilaginous, they don't get cancer or tumors. That's not quite right, but they were on the right track and so that cell culture could have been important if people would have listened to me more and actually done it right the way I had suggested. But who's going to listen to a 21-year-old punk? So I left that behind and then I went out to California and got into marine biology, shark behavior in general, and then went into the lab at the University of Southern California and stuck electrodes in individual brain cells and went into the lab at the University of Southern California and stuck electrodes in individual brain cells. So I did all of the wonderful things that I wanted to and I learned as much as I could.
Speaker 2:I don't know that I would have stayed even if the Army weren't there, because I just didn't get along with scientists. They're the passive-aggressive types and I'm not passive aggressive on any level, and so I was grateful that I had designed my life to get out of science at the last possible minute, join the army at the last possible minute, which was just before your 35th birthday, and got an airborne ranger contract, went through basic, advanced and then airborne school, which was a hoop, and then went to ranger indoctrination program and I was scared every step of the way, but I was having a great time too. So when you're scared and having fun, all you want to do is put one foot in front of the other and just keep going because it's fun. It doesn't matter how scared you are. And by the time we graduated, I graduated RIP. We started out with 150 guys and we wound up with 75 and I was number two. So at that point I said I think I might be able to do this, because I developed a lot of skills and I found that I was really good at a lot of different things and I had no idea before I'd never even shot a rifle before that and so I got my choice of duty station.
Speaker 2:The 1st Ranger Battalion, went there and what a culture shock. I'm 35 and they're 18. So kind of like going back to high school all over again, except this time getting to do it right. So it was an uphill struggle. There was just nothing but prejudice along the way for the first couple of years. So I had to prove myself every single day. But at the same time I had mapped out a plan because I was going to work out with every single division, every section within the 1st Ranger Battalion and Charlie Company, hard Rock, charlie so that I would have the skills necessary, the necessary skill, to go out and do some uh, some kind of merkle, as I wanted to, and then later hunt poachers in africa. So I they trusted me enough to let me do pretty much whatever I needed to do. Yeah, it was. It was a culture shock but it was one of the best things I had ever done in my life up until then.
Speaker 2:And so I just got on with life, went off and did some civilian work overseas and I was also ghostwriting and editing books for other people and I was doing some high-end studio photography in California Many different things. After being in the Army and seeing just how quickly a life could get snuffed out, I said, man, I better squeeze in as much as I possibly can. So those four initial checked boxes from ninth grade. I knew I had to squeeze in a lot more. I knew I had a lot to offer because I love teaching and assisting other people. So I got into again photography, studio photography. I had already done military aviation photography, flying in the backseat of high-performance jets and taking some really pretty pictures, and I had produced my first book even a couple of years before I joined the Army. So fast forward.
Speaker 2:It's been a life of action and adventure pretty much the whole time, my entire life, and there have been plenty of naysayers. There have been people who say no the entire way. Thank goodness for my dyslexia at an early age, because anytime someone told me no, I would scramble the letters and see nothing, but on, on, on, which means green light, go, go, go. So I never took no for an answer. I would ask people out of courtesy teachers, professors, adults but I didn't care what their answer was. It was usually a no. So I was able to do a lot of other things that other people didn't, simply because I didn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 2:Also because, especially when I was doing overseas missions, I had only one rule of engagement, and this is pretty much a philosophy for life Anything goes, and that's how you really win All out war. Anything goes, no, that's how you really win all-out war. Anything goes, no stupid rules of engagement that I've seen and studied, say from Korea, vietnam War, even in World War II and in these other operations since then. When you have that level of commitment also whatever it takes, it means you're willing to do whatever it takes meant also whatever it takes, it means you're willing to do whatever it takes then it's kind of hard to lose. Now it's easier for me to have done that because I didn't have a family, no children, and I had no one to worry about, no one to be concerned with. If I died, who would have cared? And so I carried that type of philosophy or that knowing with me the entire time, and so I was able to do more than the average.
Speaker 2:Now, it's not that I wore blinders the whole time.
Speaker 2:I knew what other people were doing and I saw how they were doing it incorrectly, wrong, and so, again, I knew that I was on the right path and that my methods were sound, and so I just kept on going, learning more and more, getting better and better at what I did, and, as I had said on Denny's previous podcast, you don't have to be an expert at anything.
Speaker 2:You have to be proficient at many different things and to be able to use them. A certain percentage like, say, 20%, be a marksman at your 20% grade, be a runner at 75% when you have to run away from someone, when you have to accelerate, or be a super smart thinking person, say 80% in a certain situation. You don't have to be an expert, but you have to be able to be proficient in enough things and at the right time to get out of a certain situation with your butt intact. And I discovered that along the way especially appear to be kind of OCSD entirely too focused on perfection and excellence and I completely disagree with it, and I've shown with an N of one that is a sample number of one myself that you don't have to be that way. I think that being proficient and teaching proficiency is really the way to go.
Speaker 1:Wow, man, what a story. Were you able to attend Ranger School while you were in the battalion?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did. I spent five months there Locked horns with every RI there was.
Speaker 1:Fun.
Speaker 2:And they, uh, they, they ensured that I did not finish. They call it, call it black ball or black listing. I didn't believe it at first when uh one of the RIs who was a friend of mine, uh, he said, the only way you're going to find out is, uh, if you're not going to believe me, aid station and look at the big board, about six foot tall by four foot wide board and my name was at the bottom of this big old black ball to the left of it, and so I stuck around more.
Speaker 2:I was there for five months and I felt that, well, five months in ranger school it's two and a half times through it was enough for me, because I had grown up knowing that there are certain people out there who are not going to let me succeed, and if they control not just the rules of the game but the entire game, then I'm not getting anywhere. So I had no problem saying hey, it was March 7th 1997. Hey, I LOM. Lack of motivation. Someone told me you had to say the words and I said oh, okay, I'll play that game. Lack of motivation. And then I went home without it. But what I learned there was I'm not a team player, and that's okay, because in life if you are proficient in in many different things, if you're good at what you do, then you can often do better solo than as a member of a team.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's fair enough, man. I mean, man, what an amazing story you guys. You've been around for a lot. Let's talk about. You know, your PTSD advocacy. How'd you get involved with that? And yeah, what have you done? And what are you doing? Because, of course, as you know, ptsd is a huge challenge with our veteran population at this time.
Speaker 2:Well, first, for this book that I wrote and Liz is editing, Silent Scars Bold Remedies, I changed PTSD, which is a very depressing term, to PTSX. S is kind of sexy and it's also all-encompassing. So post-traumatic stress injuries X denotes injury, any kind of injury, including TBI. So I want to be an advocate for not simply towing the line that the psychology and psychiatry mafia have instituted over decades, a hundred years. I mean. Who came up with shell shock and PTSD? That term didn't come about until just after Vietnam, around 1980. So they espoused, and still do, that there's not a molecular basis for what's going on. They'll say it's in your head. Well, these are the guys who failed physics, who failed chemistry, who failed advanced engineering math, who don't understand neurobiology, let alone biophysics. And so I see myself as fighting those people, that entire mafia association, to get people to understand that everything that goes on in the brain is neurochemistry, that everything that goes on in the brain is neurochemistry. It's chemistry, it's physics, it's biophysics. Nothing is just in your head, regardless of what you've been taught, regardless of what you've read, regardless of what you think personally. Every behavior that we have, whether it was foisted upon us because we're running away from a tiger or something, or just hugging a loved one. It all has a neurochemical slash, biophysical basis, and any time that there is some kind of stress post-traumatic stress there is always going to be some kind of inflammation that starts out as low-level inflammation. It could be outside of the CNS, central nervous system, or within it, and when that goes unchecked it leads to a whole host, a cascade, many cascades of events that in turn influence one's behavior. People get depressed, people get suicidal, people become anxious.
Speaker 2:So my bottom line is that all of these injuries have a molecular basis. Now they have an atomic basis too. The difference between the atom and the molecule is that molecules are made up of several different atoms, at least several, and those are the ones that change in some way. They evolve through the injury and they cause low-level inflammation, chronic inflammation, and they cause further injuries that are absolutely devastating, and that chemistry also changes the neuroanatomy within certain parts of the brain. So again, when it goes unchecked, it just gets worse and worse. This is not something that heals on its own. It's not like you cut your finger and then the immune system heals you in a week or so. It just clots up, it closes up and then you're good to go. Brain injuries tend just gets worse. Who he is and his brilliant research. He's also an advocate for studying, doing research and treating the molecular basis of post-traumatic stress or any kind of injuries.
Speaker 1:He doesn't call it PTSD either.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. It's a silly term. It really needs to go away. I'm almost kicking myself for retaining PTS, but we need to talk about it in that context. It is a post-traumatic stress injury, so that's why I retained PTS, but I want to get rid of the D for depressing and replace it with the X, which is all-encompassing injuries, yeah, which?
Speaker 1:is all-encompassing injuries. Yeah, and Mark's research, as you mentioned, brings up a key part of our stance on this issue of repetitive head impacts and PTSD is that we treat the symptoms when we do it, because, whether PTSD is a mental disorder or PTSI involves a mental disorder, or however you want to classify people that are struggling, everybody treats the symptoms and they don't dial into the origin. If what you're saying, I believe it's true that there's a Dr Gordon focused on the chemistry of the brain, whether it's hormonal chemistry, whether it's just the neuronal chemistry of the brain and balancing that, which is an issue. Right, that's a physiological, that's a biological issue. We're focused on damaged brains that are contributing to the mental illness through high levels of neuroinflammation and toxicity to the mental illness through, you know, high levels of neuroinflammation and toxicity, and that goes undiagnosed because nobody is trained to correlate the two.
Speaker 1:So are you finding in your advocacy and your own research you know that this situation exists, where you know they treat PTSD as a mental illness. Well, the treatments are all drugs and therapy which do not address the molecular issues or the physiological issues at hand.
Speaker 2:Exactly molecular basis of PTSX. First you have to convince enough people, the right people, the force multipliers, that it's not just in your head, I mean, it is in your head, but they're talking about behaviors. You're talking about being hysterical. You're talking about being hysterical, being anxious and depressed. Yeah, those are just the symptoms, as you said. Those don't get at the underlying issues. Let's say that you're diagnosed with anxiety. Well, there's a lot more to that diagnosis that these guys don't even know about. Anxiety can mean a lot of different things. That is at the molecular level. And if you simply over-drug somebody with Prozac or any of these other silly wasteful pharmaceuticals Toxic.
Speaker 1:Lethal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lethal, yeah Me, all of the above. When you start prescribing, overprescribing, all you do is treat symptoms. We have veterans out there who have been treated behaviorally only. The VA won't even give them drugs unless they see a psychiatrist. And I taught a course in med school and I've been around psychiatrists. These are the guys who failed physics, failed neurochemistry, failed chemistry, failed basic mathematics. They ran away from all those things they should have embraced. All they know are these so-called behavioral aspects of what they've been studying or what they've been taught, completely wrong. So, going back to what I was saying just a few minutes ago, we have to be able to get out there to force multipliers and change people's minds. It's going to be an uphill struggle to change the mind of a psychiatrist and or a psychologist. Simply because they believe what they believe, they have the anti-mentality toward all things physical and mathematical and chemical, all the things that they should be studying and they should be experts or proficient in. And they're not so convincing those guys who are defending their own bad behaviors. They're defending their own bad diagnoses.
Speaker 2:What do you do? I'll tell you what I did. I wrote a 900-page book. Well, it will be 900 by the time we're done Silent Scars, bold Remedies that lists all of the known, the known cures and therapies and treatments for post-traumatic stress injuries in general, and there are a couple of chapters in there about these treatments.
Speaker 2:At the molecular level there's an introduction written by Dr Mark Gordon, for example, and it's my gentle way of getting people to get on board If they're not willing to get on. It's a very gently moving train. It's not a bullet train, to use that as an analogy of my advocacy. It's a very gently moving train. You can walk or even on crutches right alongside it. Learn a little bit more about it, get on board with us, learn even further and then start questioning your psychologist or psychiatrist about these facts.
Speaker 2:That at the molecular level. That's where we should be studying, because when you change neurochemistry at the molecular level, when you change even neuroanatomy at the molecular level, bad things can happen. Now, of course, learning and memory, that's a whole different subject. When there's axonal growth and synaptic growth, entirely different. But when we get enough people on board so we can reach some kind of tipping point beyond which we now have a lot of momentum to go after or not go after, that was a bad slip. Go after our congressmen who protect people. Get them on board. Yeah, get those guys on board. It's not likely to happen anytime soon, probably not in my lifetime, but we have to start somewhere, and my contribution here is is this book, which what I've seen I've done extensive research for the past couple years and, anecdotally, geez ever since I was a scientist. I mean a couple things.
Speaker 1:I mean number one I think that it's the carnage that's going to get people to change. I mean the psychiatrists and psychologists. We have to admit there's been more kids die under the care of the Veterans Administration than have died in combat by a factor of eight to ten. Okay, and when we have not looked at the issues, whether it's damage from, you know, burn pits, damage from inhalation of cordite and other explosive gases, repetitive head blast, exposure to the head, repetitive head impacts and all the stuff that goes with military service, we have not addressed these issues. We got the burn pill, we got the PACT Act, all that. But when it comes to the brain, you know we have treated the brain from a point of symptom. You know symptomology right.
Speaker 1:And this is harm. And we have not looked outside yet to this day. You know, I just went to the VA and I asked my doctors, I educated them on my you know, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder as a result of, you know, like everybody knows man, I've taken bullet fragments to my face. I've been through thousands Bullets bore me. I've shot so many of them, things you know, been around, played military rugby at a high level, yada, yada, yada. But I had to educate the VA. But I went to my VA doctor and say what can you get? What could you give somebody to come in with a DD 214, a GBEV score of what? 2 million, whatever, and all this proof that they've got, you know, damage to brain? He said I got drugs, I got therapy, Maybe Tai Chi cheat. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1:You know what Mark Gordon proposes. We know of all the psychedelics, we know all the electronic modalities. All of these stimulate, enhance brain growth, whether at the molecular level, repairing tissue or balancing out the molecular imbalances that are causing a lot of these symptoms, that are retreated with drugs that cause further imbalances that send these kids down a tube and they don't know how to get out of this hole. So where do we, where do we jump on? How do we get that fixed? Man, I mean you're, you're.
Speaker 2:Well, again. Well, my contribution right now, and I actually had to. I, I ghost wrote. It was my book 10 years ago, a book called Suicide Tango, and it was an experimental novel that was written by a 17-year-old girl, a suicide, and she had a one-year-long series of meetings with her shrink. I think people should read that one. I think it's still on Amazon. The author, of course it's not a real person Tripsy South but it deals with the crap she had to go through with shrinks, with teachers, with parents all having to do with her suicidal behavior and people not wanting to understand it. Let's just medicate this chick. So that was my start as far as putting some information out there, disseminating. In the interest of fairness, we'll just call it my opinion. That's fine, I know it works and I know it's correct, but I'll call it my opinion.
Speaker 1:But that's the issue, sir, is that even psychologists, psychiatrists, have to admit now that we are not doing the right thing. So I think to your point, that is how we have to change that, because, look, man, we just can't go down this road anymore, the road that you have put us on, that the VA, the FDA, the way we treat these veterans has got to change, because we have said and this goes back to our earlier conversation this is unacceptable, because we value our veterans and we talk about values in America today. We value our veterans, we value our children and I think once we focus on those values, we might be able to have some impact on the way that we deal with, you know, brain health and these issues of repetitive impacts and repetitive blast exposure.
Speaker 2:When was the last time you tried to change someone else's values?
Speaker 1:Actually I just changed it. I just did it. I mean, I just changed an entire police activity league from tackle football to flag football with science, logic and a story, but it took me about a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, and I'm talking about not simply actions and bless you for doing that but I'm talking about changing another person's values. What do they hold dear in their heart, in their soul? That is ingrained from birth, pretty much. Now there's a behavioral component, because they learn from their parents, their grandparents, their siblings. They learn these values, they learn morals and standards, all the subjectives in life. How do we change that? Well, you can't very well change an emotion with a data point, because a data point is hard, it's cold, stainless steel, it's objective. So how do you change it? You get people who thought, feel, who work, who play purely subjectively all emotions, and you heal them in some way. Or you change their chemistry, you change the underlying nature of the anxiety and depression and then respectfully hold them up as a poster child and say, hey, go out and influence 100 other people. At least tell them your story.
Speaker 2:Stories are very important, storytelling. We've largely lost that in American culture, and it's by design, because long before the advent of the internet, because long before the advent of the internet, let alone AI and generative AI and I've got a funny story about generative AI Long before that people sat around fireplaces and they told great stories. In fact, the human brain is a transponder for story. It was designed to receive information from many, many different inputs, to analyze it, to bake it, pinch it, peel it, broil it, fry it, fricassee it until it makes sense of it. Then it stores it in different parts of the brain, such that when you come across some new anything, when you come across anything that is unfamiliar to you, you rely on old stories to help get you through it. So, to answer your question directly, I think we find people, we find the naysayers, and you make them believers by actually changing their chemistry, which in turn changes their behavior. Hopefully it's going to be for the good and they're not one of those maybe one in a thousand who dies under treatment. But that statistic aside, I think we really have to prove to people and we can, because it's a very concrete evidence or set of evidence when you change someone's behavior for the better because you changed their chemistry.
Speaker 2:Now we're at a terrible loss because there are a lot of entities out there that don't want this to happen, and I'm not going to get into that specifically. I've written a couple of books about those so-called powers that be, and this is probably not a good venue for that. However, many of these things that we're seeing that seem like no-brainers to us and to a normal person, an average person, then you have to ask okay, so the powers that be must be doing something according to their agenda. It's definitely not to help us, it's harming us in some way. So we're going against big pharma, big med, american Medical Association, med In the book Silent Scars.
Speaker 2:I talk about that, about the complete loss of holistic medicine and homeopathic medicine. Yeah, it was beginning with Rockefeller and his Flexner report, dr Abraham Flexner, who effectively had, as a show of respect to all of the non-AMA medical schools in America, he went around and interviewed people but at the end they knew exactly what they were going to do. They shut down all the chiropractic offices and med schools, all the homeopathic and holistic medical schools, so that you could bring in the big pharma. In fact, that was Rockefeller's biggest contribution to America, I think, being he changed the face of medicine and then he went over and did it in China until they said F you and get out. We're going back to the old Eastern ways. So we have an uphill battle to show the proof. Guys like Mark Gordon, who are actively doing the research and who have many proofs and successes. There need to be hundreds more just like him.
Speaker 2:Now, one of the reasons why other people are not on board or they're very slow to get on board is because of institutional inertia People who are used to doing things to satisfy the status quo. They're used to doing things because that's the way we've always done stuff, trying to convince them. Well, you know, that's kind of tough, even in the face of hard data and great results from those data. So I keep on trying. I'm going to keep on doing this. I'm going to update the book as much as possible. It will be released by Memorial Day and we're going to release it on Amazon and all online stores.
Speaker 2:So, at almost 900 pages, I pray that people will look or want to read it. I wrote it in a very gentle way, very inviting, something that will draw you in. It included a lot of really beautiful charcoal sketches and more than 100 short stories and anecdotes and shares by other people. So it's designed to say hey, even if you are a naysayer, even if you're a non-believer, just take a read about what these other people have said. They've been in the same position as you. They didn't know chemistry or anything like that. Just give it a shot, give it a read. They didn't know chemistry, or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Just give it a shot, give it a read. So Good, I am going to read it and I think that you know, unfortunately, here the only naysayers are the people that you've mentioned, right, they are the entrenched bureaucrats, the doctors. I mean doctors hate informed patients, man, they really do. I mean, I had one doctor. I mean I'm sick of people going on the Internet and coming and telling me how to do my job. I'm like, well, dude, then you know you might not be doing it right, bro, because when it comes down to things like RHI and RB, you're not educated. And he was a football doctor. He was a football doctor in a high school and he did not want to listen to my son's story, nor all the research that we funded, saying that we need to wait to delay exposure, take a contact out of practice and guess what. We can have safer sports. But your high school coach that thinks he's bill belichick, that's got these kids running to each other, or the soccer coach that has these kids throwing soccer balls against another girl's head, are harming our children. You cannot deny this right and I don't want to hear what your dad did back in the day. But unfortunately it's the naysayers that you said, the powers that be.
Speaker 1:Most of this country is coming behind this idea of, when it comes to brain health, and not just I mean. Think about the two point three million TBI's in this country car crashes, accidents, domestic abuse, you know violence, right. The gaps for them, as well as the issues that we're focused on, our HRB, are still the same, right, when it comes to the brain. Our diagnosis is horrible. Our treatments are even worse because it's drugs and therapy. You can't get insurance coverage or billing codes or anything that can help heal the brain. What are we talking about? You think about all the GDP, all the economic contributions, all the lost parents love that's going on right now because we do not take brain health seriously. It's horrible.
Speaker 2:Well, and again, that's my design, because if you want to have an educated public, then you educate them In this country's. It's pathetic.
Speaker 1:The oh, we'll educate you, but on what we think you should know. But to this kind of stuff here. I mean you look at cdc nih. I mean, until my son died there was two papers on subconcussive trauma I could find. Now our hr research is through the roof most of it. And let me ask you questions about this. Right, we have researched TBI concussions, you know PTSD, for decades, yet we refuse to act on it. Right, we got all this knowledge? Right, research for the sake of more research. Every time I talk to people like, oh, my brain, we can't see. We need biomarkers, the gold standard. That'll be 20 more years. How many kids, athletes and vets are going to die while you figure out your biomarker thing? And we have people going through Mark Gordon's protocols, steli Gangly blocks, thousands of veterans that have been through psychedelics with an 80% to 90% rate of improvement and positive growth. How do we just look away from all this stuff? Because I'm not seeing it Again. It's by design.
Speaker 2:So when you actually have good hard data and results from those data and you know that they are right, you know in your heart and soul that they're right. The statistics tell you that they are 100% accurate. And then you have the powers that be that are ignoring those. So then you know that they're acting on again a different agenda and you got to ask why. I have this hypothesis and I've studied all the sectors of society, all the industries. Every single one is at what I term fail maintenance. They are just above failure point and if you look at every industry doesn't matter what it is, they are close to failing completely. And what we're seeing now is unprecedented with the current administration. So it's going down even further. The current clown administration.
Speaker 2:The only way to get out of that an individual just has to opt out of society in general. That's about all you can do. If you look historically, it takes at least several years for people to get out there on a soapbox and vociferously make their claims before people actually listen to them, let alone do something about it and change behaviors. So that's why it's important to again educate people the right way and thank goodness that people are allowed to buy good books on Amazon. Thank goodness guys like you have podcasts and thank goodness that you got these old men like me who are saying, hey, just consider this book.
Speaker 2:I spent years, if not decades, on other parts of it putting it together. For people just like you Give it. And remember, my train is a slow moving train, ours, liz's and mine Slow moving train. You have the opportunity to learn at your pace and then, if you wish, get on board and learn more and then spread the good word like an evangelist. But it takes doing it every day, in the face of all the no's and the naysayers, and just keeping at it and then getting better at it, finding better ways, because with the high tech, which was more designed against us, we can use high tech against the powers that be. It's the only way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, use their own social media, I mean podcasts, I mean it's the podcast, generative AI.
Speaker 2:There are so many different tools that we can use, but it really takes interest too. There aren't that many people. There were never, and there never have been that many people who were willing to stand up as advocates for anything in the world Anything. It's always maybe one in a thousand, or sometimes one in a million. And those are the people who keep at it, who do it with compassion, if not love, but definitely passion and interest, and maintain the high integrity of their word and their message, because as soon as you screw up, as soon as you tell a lie, then the naysayers will have all the ammunition they need to shut you down. We have to get this right.
Speaker 2:Guys like Dr Mark Gordon, you and Denny with your podcasts, and the other authors out there who are writing books advocating for more study about molecular biology, the molecular basis of PTSD, and bless, bless all of you. And the only way to get anywhere and it's going to take years, it already has is just keep going. Maintain your passion, and you have. There's going to be a time in your life when you feel like giving up or you're just plain tired or you want to do something else. So ensure that you have followers who are evangelists for your case, your cause, so that they're just like passing something down to the next generation. But our generation right now is. Here's what I want to talk about with Gen AI, just to go off tangentially for a minute. I was looking at the statistics of generative artificial intelligence, like large language models like CHAT, gpt and CLOD. The number one item that they're, or the reason that they're using Gen AI and it's a two-part one is companionship, companionship within artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1:I cannot fathom that at all.
Speaker 2:And the second is therapy, companionship and therapy. That's what they're using this tool for. That tells you. It tells me that America, this is what they want when you start looking at symptoms of the disease, and that's a huge symptom right there. So now we pretty much have or can guess or hypothesize what the disease is. There is an epidemic of mental health disorder in America, if not across the entire world, and it shows up in those statistics, statistics, and say hey, these guys, we got millions of Americans, 10, 15 millions of Americans, and another 5 million in France and 10 million in the rest of Europe, and they're all coming to us for therapy and companionship and they're just, they're raving about it, and then I'm sitting back in my chair and I'm going. You fucking idiots, do you know what that statistic really means? It means that there is a mental health problem across the world.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, no, it's, it's, it's and it's not going to get any better because these, the, the, you know, fda wants you in a lifetime of drugs, man, you know, and they don't want it. Nobody wants to fix this because of the money that's involved, whatever, except for the people that are suffering. And with Mark Gordon you mentioned him a couple times and all these other modalities out there. They exist, they work, they're proven. Yet these people are mortgaging their homes to fix their own brains because insurance won't cover it. And it's just. I mean, the VA just came out with a billing code last year for blast exposure to the brain, now, all the body parts you think would be affected by blast. Well, they had it covered your colon, your stomach, your lungs, your heart.
Speaker 1:They had. What about this? I mean, what organ could not be more impacted by blast exposure? Maybe they thought, oh, you got a helmet, only to find out if the waves bounce around inside the helmet and create more damage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, it's just uh well, there's more money to be made from brain injuries and, you know, by big pharma and American Medical Association associated doctors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, getting them to even just look at kids playing contact sports is a nightmare right now. I mean, 60% of doctors out there would recommend football to dads because of their lack of awareness of what it does to the kids, or they want to create future patients. Maybe there's some selfishness in here, you know, which would be horrible if that was actually true. But you know, we are an uninformed society on a large number of issues that we get from social media. We get all this shallow take and it's books like yours that can help people, you know, become informed man. People don't read anymore, right, I mean, they do this, I got it, thank God. I got a podcast for you, right, I actually wrote a book for you, too, but I made it 88 pages instead of 900 because of my attention span, right, but yeah, so every little bit helps it does it does when.
Speaker 2:What I found is that those of us who are advocating for the molecular studying and researching and treating the molecular basis of post-traumatic stress injuries people have to see us as authentic. They have to see us as genuine and compassionate. We have to be real people. That's why I think that podcasts like this are important, because people get to see you, they get to read your body language and do as much as you can in a podcast, sitting in a chair and not moving around too much. But when people sense all those characteristics, then they trust you and that's one of the first things, or first characteristics, that you need to overcome this negativity toward what we're doing and to get them on that slow moving train to at least get their interest up and to do a little research on your own, and it doesn't take much. But then again, you have to look at what values these people hold. I mean, these people are fellow Americans. We'll just stick with America.
Speaker 2:I grew up in Europe and I traveled yeah, that's right. Travel yeah, that's right. The values have been established by the powers that be and they're not the values that I hold dear. I made my own, just like I made my own ROE when I did combat missions overseas or in Africa. It's my life. I know that what I do is correct and what is accurate and what is good for me and what's good for clients that I escorted out of hostile territories. I'm not going to listen to somebody else's ROE or somebody else's mandates because they're wrong. I am very fortunate to be in Montana to be around physicians who listened to me. I got to educate some of them the ones I dealt with on issues of PTSX, and they have intimated that they can't go against the system or they lose their jobs, which is another problem.
Speaker 1:That's why NFL players can't speak out because they'll lose their check NHL. You know all these guys, man. I mean it's unfortunate because they're beholden to a system that took the best years of their life, took the best that they had to offer, and then, when they were done, they said, ah, thank you very much, move on. You know that's going to change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that would be good. You know, there's a lot to be grateful for here, though, we have a VA system that, at least, is receptive to many of these issues, and they're changing begrudgingly, but they are changing, and I think that's because enough veterans have spoken up, and there are. There are hundreds of advocacy groups out there. I even in the past couple of five years, my goodness bless all of them. There are enough advocacy groups out there that have these people like Robert Irving, or Irvine, who's the celebrity chef, a big advocate for US military veterans, and others who are Gary Sinise Gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gary's amazing, he's amazing. I've never met him, but I see him a lot yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're lucky to have guys like that, who are permitted, who are allowed by the powers that be, to go ahead and do that, do their thing and to help people to create awareness. It's still not enough, but I'm grateful for that, because we live in a country that allows you to do that. Growing up in Europe 15 years after the end of World War II, growing up in Europe 15 years after the end of World War II, it was devastated. People were downtrodden, people were anxious and depressed, yet they still kept going. That was the heart of the typical German and the typical Italian that I knew and grew up with and lived with.
Speaker 2:However, in America I don't think think we've, we haven't really known enough hardship. We've never, we've never been invaded by a foreign force that swept across the entire country. It has not been. We've never been bombed back to the stone age as, as General Kurt LeMay would say, like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. We haven't felt those hardships. We have had it relatively easy and I think now more than ever, people should.
Speaker 2:I pray that we'll wake up to the fact that everybody is, or three different types of members of society are being pigeonholed. We have the wealthy and they have. Wall Street and they're not going to give up their riches or the opportunity to learn riches, so they don't rock the boat. We have the middle class that screams at the administration when things go wrong, and that's why the powers that be want to destroy the middle class. Of course, we have the poor or the broke. They don't get into the fight because they have welfare. So we have the bottom most and the top most tiers of American society that won't do anything.
Speaker 2:However, we have the middle class and it's really those people I talk to and I'm addressing that even if you're not interested in the subject, even if you have not been touched by post-traumatic stress or suicide anxiety or depression, even though you haven't take an interest, because the people around you maybe the cook or the chef at your favorite restaurant, maybe the server at McDonald's what if they go off the deep end and they start poisoning your food? So you know, perhaps a silly example, but everybody needs to take an interest because we're all connected and, even though you may not feel some of the negativity that's going on way over on the East Coast because you're living way up in Montana or deep in the heart of Wisconsin, it is affecting a lot of other people just like you, and who knows, it may be on your doorstep the next day. So I'm praying that people will at least take an interest and and and listen, and I think we're.
Speaker 1:We're seeing that, especially with repetitive, repetitive impacts, because both the wealthy, the middle class and our lower bracket of of disadvantaged folks there all play contact sports. I mean, I, I was helping a, a family the other day who just sold their company for like with a B right, he had a 15 year old been playing too much contact sports, struggling out. So we're starting to see that, hey, this issue and veterans right now not a lot of wealthy people joined the military, got it right, but, you know, our poor and middle-class folks are the backbone of our military right now and we're seeing that from the blast exposure. But, to your point, we are Americans, we are connected and we do need to reach out and it's advocates like you that are leading the way with the knowledge that we need to obtain in order to make informed decisions. You know, promote better public policy, better legislation. Promote better public policy, better legislation, and and and, and. And. People listen.
Speaker 1:I had a, you know, a chief of staff for, uh, senator Rick Scott, telling me he said hey, man, we spent billions of dollars on the Nika virus and it didn't kill one person because people were freaked out and they yelled. He said create buzz and we will listen. So we got to create the buzz, man, I think between you know your, your efforts, dr Mark Gordon, our efforts. We're going to get the buzz out there and it's going to be amazing. Dino, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. What a great story, man. I mean I don't think we've dialed into half of it yet. Man, we're going to have to have you come back on.
Speaker 2:Thank, you Dino?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, amazing journey. Thank you so much for your advocacy, but hey, before we go, I always give folks a chance to promote themselves, so tell us you know what's next for Dino. We talked about the book. Keep talking about it. When does the book come out? What's the book going on? How do people find you, sir, so they can learn more from you and the wealth of knowledge you represent?
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. Thank you, I'm on LinkedIn under Dino D-I-N-O Garner, g-o-s-n-g-o-l-f A-R-N-E-R Dino Garner. I also have a little newsletter called the Frontier Report, in which I talk about geopolitical issues and other issues of interest to Americans, and sometimes just fun issues that are passionate to me. So please contact me there. Silent Scars Bold Remedies as soon as Liz and I finish editing and I need to add an index to it too. So that's another I don't know 100 pages and the table of contents. Geez, I haven't thought about that one in the past couple of months. As soon as that, I'm praying, saying a big prayer for Memorial Day release. Nice, yeah, you guys will like this one.
Speaker 2:I think there's the Aeromasters book. It's the first book in a trilogy that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. By the way, the Silent Scars was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, but the Aeromasters book, celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot if people love military fighter aviation, you'll love this book. Every person who's ever seen it, from two, three and four-star generals and admirals right down to 10-year-old kids, has absolutely loved it. They said we were expecting something really great, but we weren't expecting to be absolutely overwhelmed by it. So that's a really great book.
Speaker 2:But for those of you who have seen the TV show Ted Lasso and this is, on a very positive note, upbeat Ted Lasso, I just finished the first draft of a book called Ted Lasso's 25 Maxims. Ted Lasso I just finished the first draft of a book called Ted Lasso's 25 Maxims, and it's all about his sweet, tangy barbecue sauce, philosophy and leadership. So that, hopefully, will be finished by Memorial Day as well. And I just wrote probably one of the most fun books I've ever written. It's sort of how to be a ninja for 10 year olds, how to get over on your parents and, in turn, without being a little shit and in turn, how to become a better adult. So there are those, and that sounds great.
Speaker 1:I want to get that for my grandson. My daughter might not like it, but I'll get it there.
Speaker 2:I can imagine, yeah Well.
Speaker 1:I'll probably have to come out with one for parents, I'd like to know how to get over on my wife.
Speaker 2:man, she's too smart for me, man.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm not writing that one. I don't blame you, man. Well, Dino, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I mean, that's an amazing testimony to grit, intellectual perseverance and just care for people that are not being properly taken of. We need more people like you in the country, sir. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Thank you so much, Bruce.
Speaker 1:Folks, another great edition of Broken Brains. Cannot thank you enough for paying attention. Remember free book the only book for parents out there on RHI what it does to your children, why we need to wait, how we're going to make sports safer Go get it, it's for free. Download it, send it to all your friends. Don't forget the Head Smart app on the Apple or Google Store the most profound can't think of a better word right now concussion app on there with the only concussion app that has information on repetitive head impacts and how to be aware of them and how to watch for those good coaches that are taking care of your kids, not the ones that are harming them.
Speaker 1:And then the second international summit on repetitive brain trauma will be held in Tampa, hosted by the Mack Parkman Foundation, september 3rd and 2nd and 3rd. Get your tickets. We have an amazing group of speakers Dr Mark Gordon coming back this year. It's going to be a really great time. We're going to be talking about legislation, education, rhi, rbe, everything in the repetitive brain trauma space and how do we impact and force the change, because Dino's on a slow-moving train and I'm going to jump on it, but we need to put some more coal in that hopper and get that thing chugging. So, anyways, to all of you out there, god bless you. Take care of those brains. It's the only one we got, the only one you got, and we all have them, and we'll see you next time on Broken Brains, thank you.