.png)
THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion
🎙️ Welcome to The SJ Childs Show Podcast! 🎉
Join Sara Bradford—better known as SJ Childs—as she bridges understanding and advocacy for the neurodivergent community. This podcast shines a light on autism awareness, empowering stories, expert insights, and practical resources for parents, educators, and individuals alike.
Brought to you by The SJ Childs Global Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting autistic individuals and their families worldwide, this show is your weekly dose of inspiration and actionable ideas. Visit sjchilds.org to learn more about our mission, find resources, and connect with our growing community.
Catch us on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Goodpods—or tune in Fridays at 8:30 AM EDT on the Helium Radio Network’s Life Improvement Radio (Channel 1). Together, let’s foster a brighter, more inclusive world! 🌟
Go here to download training materials!
https://sjchilds.myshopify.com/
THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion
Episode 329-From Scans to Sunlight: Rethinking Autism Care with Dr. Theodore Henderson
What if “treatment-resistant” isn’t about you—it’s about the tools? We sit down with Dr. Theodore Henderson, a neurobiologist and psychiatrist, to rethink brain care for autism, TBI, depression, anxiety, and long COVID through neuroplasticity, functional imaging, and smarter energy-based therapies. Instead of labels and guesswork, we dig into how infrared light can reach mitochondria, raise BDNF, and trigger repair; why power and dosing make or break results; and how SPECT scans help clinicians ask better questions before prescribing. Dr. Henderson shares a striking case where a bipolar diagnosis crumbled under imaging—and Lyme disease treatment resolved years of symptoms. We also unpack the politics around SPECT access and the fresh shift in nuclear medicine guidelines that put TBI, dementia, and infectious disease back on the map. From there, we head into the future: ExoMind’s next-gen TMS with shorter, quieter, higher-impact sessions; the safety essentials that keep interventions comfortable; and the real-world outcomes families care about most—less anxiety, fewer spirals, clearer thinking, more daily ease. The theme is synergy: infrared plus ketamine, infrared plus TMS, layered with sleep, sunlight, and sensory-friendly routines to create lasting change. Along the way, we honor neurodiversity and practical wins for autistic individuals: reducing rigidity, softening anxiety, and supporting unique strengths without forcing sameness. If your current plan isn’t working, this conversation offers a hopeful pivot—more data, fewer assumptions, and a toolkit that actually matches the brain’s biology. Subscribe, share with someone who needs a new path, and tell us: what question do you want your brain to answer next?
S2 Child Show is back for its 13th season. They're back for the SJ Child Show team as they explore the world of autism and share stories of hope and inspiration. This season, we're excited to bring you more autism summit featuring experts and advocates from around the world. Go to SCchilds.org to donate and to get more information. Congratulations on 2024's 20,000 downloads in 300 episodes.
SPEAKER_03:Well, hello. We are back with another fantastic episode. I'm really looking forward to this conversation today. And I'm happy to bring to you Dr. Theodore Henderson. And where are you coming from today, uh, Dr. Dr. Theo? Dr. Dr. Henderson, which one?
SPEAKER_00:Uh Denver, Colorado.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, wonderful. I'm your neighbor in Salt Lake City.
SPEAKER_00:There you go.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's great. We're having a really nice summer. I mean, it's a little hot as always, but having a pretty nice summer as far as it goes. Um, it's I'm excited to talk to you today. Uh, tell us a little bit about yourself, give us an introduction and let the audience know a little bit about yourself and what brought you here.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Um, well, briefly, uh, I'm a uh PhD in neurobiology first, uh, and then I, well, not first, but um it guides my life. Uh so I'm a brain doc from the outset uh and I'm an MD. Uh I studied radiology and then I settled into psychiatry, and I also did a residency fellowship in uh child psychiatry. So in my child psychiatry fellowship, uh I uh became fascinated by the world of autism and began working with the uh JFK Center at the University of Colorado. I actually did a research fellowship for several months there. Uh and the autism has uh been a part of my practice uh since then. I'm on the advisory board of U.S. Autism Association, uh, and I've worked with you know greats like Dr. Larry Kaplan and um several others, and uh brought to them uh neuroimaging and also sort of more holistic psychiatry, which has sort of been my bent. Now, over the past uh 15 years, I've moved away from medicine because I'm frustrated by medications and uh side effects, and move towards more neuroplasticity-based treatments, more natural treatments. Um, and you know, for example, uh the work I'm will be talking about today is uh involves infrared light, and there's nothing more natural than light. Uh so uh yeah, I think uh we're gonna get into some very interesting things here.
SPEAKER_03:I love this conversation, and it really um is interesting, and uh a lot of people actually won't know this. Yay, new information for my listeners, which is exciting after 300 episodes, right? Um, but I um this really ties into my life because I'm actually a former massage therapist, and there's just certain things that you learn when you're working with bodies and um it all types of things, whether it is actually physical or neurological, and the effects that come from working, you know, with people. And I think that it leading into my experience as well, uh learning more and you know, this expansive journey I'm on with uh my entire autistic family, and to really uh uh identify and give a new perception of what um each brain I I would love that if we could look at it that way rather than this idea that there's these types that have to be labeled and looked at. I I would love to be in the kind of the community where everyone is honored that they're a different type of human and unique person and their brain is different than everybody else's in the room. So um I think that that is kind of like where I'm I get excited personally and passionate about what we're gonna talk about today. And um, but back to that massage therapist is that um he was also uh did kinesiology and infrared. And so just I've had experience and I've seen the effects that uh these type of more holistic uh practices can help with one's healing processes. So yeah, explain to our audience uh a little bit more about that kind of exact practice or modality and how it uh ties in, if you will.
SPEAKER_00:Well, um, I'm gonna geek out here. So all right, so certain wavelengths of infrared light, if they can reach the mitochondria, the organelles within the cells that make energy, are able to activate those mitochondria. Um, we're gonna leave it at that. There's lots of detail in there, but just it activates the mitochondria, and that does two things. One, it makes more energy, and number two, it the mitochondria sends signals down to the chromosomes and turn on really important genes. For example, uh, one of the genes that's activated is brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF for short. Now, BDNF is the growth factor that drives neuroplasticity in the adult brain. Now, it just so happens that my postdoctoral research while I was a medical student and resident was on BDNF. So I understand BDNF very, very well. And when I first came into this field of infrared light, um, you know, I was thinking, okay, this is sort of nonsense. How is how's light going to get through the scalp and the skull and into the brain? I mean, really, guys, what's going on here? But when I read a study out of Harvard that said, look, we show that we're turning on BDNF in the brains of mice with infrared light, and it's leading to brain repair. I was all in. And I said, okay, we got to figure out how to make this work in humans. So we went into the research lab and literally figured out how to, you know, size it up from what worked in a mouse in a research lab at Harvard to something that worked on people. And that was back in 2013. We started treating patients in 2013-2014 who had traumatic brain injuries. And a lot of these patients, we had brain scan data on them. So they had a spec scan, a functional brain scan at baseline. We treated them, we repeated this the spec scan, and lo and behold, their brains looked better.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Not only did their brains look better, but they clinically were better. Their depression was gone, their anxiety was gone, their uh cognitive problems were gone, their headaches were gone, their irritability was gone. It's like, wow, pretty cool stuff. So we published all that in 2015. Now, let's get back to those mitochondria for a second. The mitochondria also sends signals that activate anti-inflammatory proteins. And it also sends signals that turn on that bring stem cells out of hibernation and makes them turn into neurons and get into the game, so to speak. So this is a very, very powerful technique. Um, and I'll add more in a little bit. When we started working with uh folks treating folks directly with infrared light, we're using enough power to get through the scalp and skull. So we are directly treating the neurons in the brain. There's lots of these uh devices out there that use low power light, they're half watt LEDs. You could buy them for a couple thousand dollars off Amazon or from ViLite or spend six thousand dollars for a helmet. The problem is half a watt doesn't even get through human skin. So you're treating the skin now that does something, but it's not treating the brain. Wow, okay. So that's kind of a basic primer in infrared light and how it activates brain healing.
SPEAKER_03:How can we find it in nature? Is that a possibility?
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh, yeah, I understand that you know, we're delivering, you know, 13, 14 watts of infrared light to the scalp. Um, that would give you a heck of a sunburn uh if you were getting that on a regular basis, right? Yeah, there is infrared light in the sun, so getting out in nature and getting infrared light on your skin, it does something. Yeah, the skin does something, and I can get into that at some point if you're interested. But I love that yeah, so you know, getting kids out uh away from the screens for crying out loud and into the sunshine is really, really good for them.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. I can attest for that for just for myself this year. I've been out gardening and planting more than ever, and I think this year uh just turning 49 and I've ran through the sprinklers more than I have in a decade.
SPEAKER_04:So I love it, right?
SPEAKER_03:Whatever we find to keep ourselves young. But no, I agree. I um there's a lot of even small things that I've noticed that have increased um as far as like energy and mobility, and just as far as um, I think I'm getting out so much that it's changed the being in for so many years and you know, in my office in my computer doing those things. Um, but yeah, I think that it's so important that we get our kids out there too. Um, and let's talk about because I think that there's a little bit of like um maybe uh not even a stigma, but a disbelief even in um in brain scanning. And I think I that's how I mean I had mine done. I had a Q EEG and I had mine done through that process. So I think that it worked for me. I mean, it told it it gave me the information that resonated, that felt right, that made sense, that answered years of questions or problems or resistance that I may have had to myself that I could embrace and say, oh my gosh, yes, this is exactly um what that means and and why. So for me, it was just that was it was so powerful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so you want me to talk about uh functional brains? I want you to talk about brain scans. Um so I got involved in uh functional brain scans about 20 years ago, um almost 25 years ago now. And my initial reason for getting involved is you know, I went and listened to Daniel Lehman, you know, yeah, kind of the big the name you think of when you think of spec scans. And I went up to him after the talk and I said, you know, you might be right, but you can't prove any of what you just said, you've not done the research. And so the opportunity came uh for me to get involved with a company that was doing spec scans in Denver. And, you know, again, I'm a neurobiologist. I trained in neurobiology. I used to used to teach brain anatomy to medical students year after year after year. I I know what does what, and my my thesis, my PhD work was on structure-function relationships. So, in other words, every part of a brain has a particular assignment, and it's structurally refined to do that assignment very, very well. So you can't take motor cortex and or motor cortex and expect it to work in the visual cortex, they're they're different. Anyways, so I started working in that field, and I started uh really getting an understanding of the science of uh spec scans and science of nuclear medicine. And we started uh then doing, you know, taking large cohort studies, so hundreds of patients with ADHD or hundreds of patients with traumatic brain injury. And what do you see? So, in fact, I published probably on the order of 20 papers now on SPEC scans. Uh, and the last uh pair of papers uh that we did, um, well, actually, let's back up a sec. So the APA, the American Psychiatric Association, came out about six years, seven years ago with a with a statement. There's no use in psychiatry for neuroimaging. There's no reason to do neuroimaging in psychiatry. Now, when you read that paper, it was really about functional MRI. It was not about spec scans. But everyone assumed it was about spec scans. Um, but really, when you read the paper, it's not. So we in fact wrote three separate papers rebutting that premise, uh, specifically on SPEC scans. And for example, I'll give you just one example. So here's a young man, um, and he presents to a psychologist here in uh Colorado, and uh they determined after spending some time with him that he had bipolar disorder, and that was the cause of his problems that he was bipolar disorder, and maybe he had a personality disorder. Um, and uh then you know they sent him to me to do uh a spec scan. So he got a spec scan back, and the the scan of bipolar disorder is very specific. In fact, I published a paper with my Canadian colleagues of a family where everybody had bipolar and everybody had gotten a spec scan, and they all look exactly alike. So there is a there's a phenotype, there's a marker for bipolar disorder and spec scans. This kid did not have that. In fact, this kid looks like his brain was under attack. And I said, This is an infected brain, and so I did some further digging, and it turns out this kid had Lyme disease. Wow, and when we treated his Lyme disease, all of his problems went away like that.
SPEAKER_02:Amazing.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, he had been diagnosed with uh a disorder that has a lifetime consequence, bipolar disorder on lithium or depicode or antipsychotic for the rest of your life. My goodness, and now he's medication free, you know. Never needed it in the first place, absolutely, and and you know, and because of that paper, I had three or four more people called me up and say, I kind of wonder if my son might have bipolar or might have Lyme disease. And sure enough, um, you know, we found a lot of these misdiagnosed psychiatric cases. My own daughter uh contracted Lyme disease, and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by the docs in in Chicago. They didn't do anything about she had relapsing fevers every six weeks, but oh, let's not uh look at that. That's uh oh, I don't know what that is. We're not gonna pay attention to that.
SPEAKER_03:Uh you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, so functional brain scans, and and this is Daniel Eyman's line. And and you know, uh uh Daniel Eyman and I have published papers together, we've worked together on big projects. And one of the things he says that I think is spot on, he says, spec scans help you ask better questions. They don't give you the answers, they help you ask better questions. Yeah, so I don't do a spec scan on everybody who walks in the room. Um, I do them on the ones that I can't figure out, or the ones that are not responding the way they're supposed to. That's when you need a spec scan to help clarify the diagnosis and the situation. Now, um one of the things that's interesting, I smirked when you mentioned spec scan or scans because in the state of Colorado currently, uh, and this, you know, if there's uh a listener out there who happens to be a journalist or happens to uh be uh uh a philanthropist or a litigator, um in the state of Colorado, you cannot, cannot, cannot get a spec scan done. Period. Well the reason is that one radiology group controls the authorized user position for all of the hospitals outside of the University of Colorado. And that one radiology group has decided we're not going to allow spec scans. And so, you know, the the hospital I had been working with for years suddenly says, Oh, we can't do spec scans because the radiologist refuses to do them. I requested a meeting with this radiologist, he refused. I sent him our definitive papers on SPEC scans and traumatic brain injury, which have been recognized by Discover magazine as some of the top work in that particular year, 2019. He refused to read them.
SPEAKER_03:Why wouldn't you want more information? That's baffling to me.
SPEAKER_00:Politics. So now here's the good news. Just today, just today, the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, which is the US society that governs things like spec scans, put out the new procedure guidelines. No, they're not out yet. This is where they send them out and everybody gets to comment on them. And they put in, they put back in traumatic brain injury, dementia, which had been taken out for inexplicable reasons, and infectious disease. In other words, diagnosing Lyme disease. In fact, the only reference they offer is diagnosing Lyme disease. Uh, ignoring, of course, our papers. But uh you know, uh, two of our papers were cited. Two are the papers that I had done with uh Cyrus Raji and Daniel Eamond and uh uh Phil Cohen and other great uh researchers and and clinicians in the field. So that is a crack in the in the in the wall uh that has been put up around spec scans. And you know, my frustration is I I was the guy saying to Eamon, you don't know that you're right, you can't prove it because you haven't done the research. We went in, we did the research. And you know, Daniel Eamon and I did several papers together, and he's got this huge database, so there's tons more papers that could be done. And we've done the research, so we have established the facts, yeah, and medical medical community refuses to look at them. Neurology, it's like, oh no, nothing to see here. Psychiatry, you know, why look at the organ that we're treating? That would like imply that we didn't like uh just uh know what we are doing because we got a guidebook that says, Oh, uh uh depression, uh let's go with uh Prozac, uh anxiety. Oh, yeah, that's uh LexaPro. Yeah, by the way, SSRIs don't do anything for depression or anxiety. I mean, they're just they're a waste of time.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I couldn't tell you how many, and uh I mean, my mom will never listen to this, bless her heart, but she's a nurse, and my whole life growing up was what medication could change, what else, what something about me that she could change with some medium medication. I was like literally a lab rat, I feel like. And you know, now that I'm like governed my own body and all of the access and everything, um, wow, I see and and can understand the effects that all of those um misdiagnosed things and the same thing, bipolars, um, you know, and and depressions or anxiety and um the number of and not for even the right reasons, birth control that I was on for managing um more moods than anything. It was like this constant list of what we could do, you know, and now I'm just like, wow, um, I ground myself and drink tea and meditate. And oh wow, I found all of these amazing things that I can just do on my own. I put my hands in the dirt and you know, like get connected. And it's just so much different now. Um, but it's and it gives me luckily the perception and the experience to not put my own children through that same process and to be a little bit more naturalistic in the way I approach things and more um, but yeah, it I kind of understand that like let's just throw everything at it but not look at it. You know, we'll just put blindfold on and throw things. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:There's this really interesting, sort of holistic uh approach that uh it's actually gaining ground. So I was just at a conference, um, the Neuron Well conference in uh the Czech Republic. And so there are people from all over Europe, as well as a few of us from uh uh the US in attendance. And what the Neuron Well uh program is working on doing is developing a center outside of Prague. Um and you know, he took us to the facility. It's this huge facility with extensive grounds, uh swimming pool, horse arenas, and and he's looking at bringing in you know uh multiwatt infrared light therapy that I introduced briefly, um, transcranial magnetic stimulation, so working with things like the exo mind, um uh uh horse therapy, uh aquatherapy, you know, all of the all of the um interpersonal therapies, as well as uh eventually creating living uh uh arrangements so that there's group housing and and people can live, you know, have a store that they go to and shop and learn skills. And his idea is that this would be sort of this intensive two-month experience where they would try to move the needle. And one of the fascinating things is what they're doing with stem cells in Europe. I mean, it's way different from what we're able to do in here here in the US. Uh, and so that was really exciting. There was a group there from uh Kiev, uh, and I was talking with them because one of the things I want to do is get into Ukraine once the fighting stops and start treating all these folks who have traumatic brain injuries and concussion and you know, PTSD and and you know, horrible grief from you know, everyone's lost a loved one there. So uh it was it was an exciting conference, but the you know, I was talking about this sort of this holistic thinking, but everyone else was thinking holistically as well. So I I really felt like I was, you know, wow, I'm I found my niche.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, then that's how nice when you can have that conversation and it's not looked at as uh you know something they want to hide behind any excuse to get out of the conversation. Right, right. Yeah, I I I'm really glad to know that there are um groups that of people like you that are getting together and making these, you know, decisions. Tell us a little bit about ExoMind and what that means and what that does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So you know, I've stood by and watched TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation for years. So uh just to explain TMS to your listeners in case they're uh not familiar. So, what it involves is putting a magnet fairly close to your head and running a uh you know a signal through the magnet. So turning on the magnet. Now, when you turn on a magnet, you actually create a uh an electrical field that's perpendicular to the magnetic field. So the electrical field's going you know in and out of the head. So you're creating an electrical current in the brain. You know, this is like you know, shock therapy, but without the shock. And so TMS was initially developed as a way to map the brain, and now it's used to treat uh depression and things like this. However, you know, when I look at all the data, you know, the chance that you'd get better from depression was uh 50-50. I wasn't thrilled with 50-50, I was waiting for the next generation, and the next generation is Exomite. Rather than having a 1.2 Tesla magnet, this is a 3.6 Tesla magnet. So it's literally kind of the magnetic field of an MRI. So it's very powerful, and they revolutionized sort of the inner workings. I won't go into it. So the treatments are much shorter, and you need much fewer treatments to get the benefit. So this is a hugely powerful technique. There are very few of these machines in the US. It's a it's a company out of the Czech Republic. I literally went to the headquarters where they build these things, and it's like going through a Ferrari manual, uh uh the Ferrari um manufacturing plant, where like a team builds the car from the frame up. One team, one car. And so they're responsible for everything about that car, and and the care and attention that they put into these. I was just blown away.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. And I mean, maybe a question I have in my listeners might have can any of these things damage you rather than help you?
SPEAKER_00:Great question. Yeah, that's a really important question. I mean, it's always the first thing to look at is you know, safety. So, you know, in the case of TMS, uh, even with you know, a more powerful magnet, there is very little evidence of um uh like long-term, you know, brain damage or anything like that. Now, with the old machines, they are very noisy. So people would get tinnitus, they'd get earaches, they'd get headaches. This machine sounds like this. That's it.
SPEAKER_04:Um MRI.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So, well, no, I mean MRI is just like being in a Maj Pit.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But uh, so you know, my technologists, you know, have to have to train and they had to work, they had to treat me before they treat any of my patients. I I am their guinea pig. They had to do that five times with me before I let them touch a patient. So, you know, I I've had you know a whole bunch of Xamine treatments. And um, you know, it's it's um what's what's the word I want to use? It's sort of like you, it's sort of like uh, you know, getting, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you're kind of groggy, and you have that first cup of coffee or that first cup of tea, and then you then you kind of wake up and it's like it's that sort of feeling. It's like, wow, okay, things are kind of a little brighter, I can, and I can think more clearly. So it's it's remarkable in that way. Um, so with the XMI, you know, there's not the headaches, there's not the earaches, it's not the you know, loud noises, so it's much more comfortable. It takes 24 minutes, so it's easier to do, and you know, the number of treatments you need is not 40, it's six. So it's remarkably different. Now, in the case of infrared light, now you know, there are these low-power devices that you can buy and you can take home, and they're low power because you can take them home. Um, our device is strong enough that I mean, if I held it, you know, on a piece of fabric for a while, I could burn a hole through the fabric. Let's be honest. Um, we don't do that, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So, you know, uh again, my technologists are trained, and you know, uh we know how to keep it moving such that we don't raise the temperature. And we literally used to follow the the emitter around with a digital thermometer checking ourselves until we made sure we had that that uh rhythm down.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So we know how to do this in a way that doesn't cause any discomfort or harm. Um You know, it is a powerful antidepressant. So if you are a bipolar patient and we give you a powerful antidepressant, you can get a little hypomatic. And so, you know, one of the things I always do then is I have a special protocol for folks who are on the bipolar spectrum. Um, but what we're seeing with autism with this more powerful infrared light is reduction in anxiety. That isn't I have yet to meet someone on the spectrum who did not have anxiety.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_00:So a reduction in the anxiety and a reduction in that sort of cognitive rigidity. So I'll give you one great example. This young man, he's in his mid-20s now, and he's he's hooked on social media, and he gets very upset when somebody, you know, blocks him on whatever they're on. And he takes it very personally, and he gets he would escalate himself to the point that he's saying, Call the police, have them come shoot me. I mean, just horrifying level of agitation. And now, you know, he says, Man, that I'm really upset about that, and that's it. He doesn't spiral up, he doesn't perseverate, it doesn't get stuck like he used to. So that's the kinds of things that we're seeing for folks who are on the autism spectrum. Um, but this modality, you know, we're treating Parkinson's patients, we're treating patients with dementia, we're treating long COVID patients, and they get better and they're 100% better. Go home. Uh depression, PTSG, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, and we really we can heal um from so many things. And I think that the more we offer resources and opportunities like this for people to learn about things and share with their families and and you know, hopefully others, then um it will start having an effect on our communities. And that's the most important part of all. And I, you know, when we're healthier in our brains and our minds, and we have children, then we're being an example of of better um living and better humaning than for our children. And you know, it's I think that it's it's going to be just this wonderful, you know, hopefully, uh come together of everything and raise the vibrations. And everybody started getting their brain done. No, just joking. Uh it's it's a great, um, it's a great resource to have. Where can people go to find out more about this and maybe your papers or do you have your own website where people can find out more?
SPEAKER_00:Website? What's what's a website?
SPEAKER_04:Right?
SPEAKER_00:No, uh www.healmybrain.info. So www.healmybrain.info. That will take you to the neuraluminance uh website. Neuraluminance is the clinic company. There you go, healmybrain.info. And it's a lot easier to spell than neuraluminance. Now there are you know case examples on there, and there's the some of the science on there, and the some of the science about the exo mind is on there. And one of the fascinating things here is I have about I have five patents and two patents pending. One of the patents is on the combination of infrared light and ketamine. Now we've not talked about ketamine, but just very quickly, ketamine turns on neuroplasticity by a different mechanism. So putting infrared light neuroplasticity and ketamine neuroplasticity together, you get one plus one equals three, which is really cool. So synergy. Now, one of the things that we know is that the exomite turns on neuroplasticity by a voltage-gated calcium channel pathway, a third mechanism. So potentially infrared light plus TMS can have that same kind of synergy. And so that's one of the areas that I'm really studying and paying attention to and thinking about uh here as we're moving forward over the next year or so. Uh, and I think that, you know, uh we're going to see that, you know, synergy is something that's going to be a become a part of how we think about uh treating any disorder. And you know, I do that already in pharmacology. You know, in autism, I'm not using SSRIs and Respiridone. You know, I'm using I'm using medicines people haven't even heard of doxysosin, uh, you know, and maybe some they have, guanfacine. Uh, and you know, I uh I'm things like oxcarbazepine, trileptol. And uh, you know, so I I'm I'm adding in things that work on mechanisms within the brain rather than just you know putting a pharmacological strait jacket on the brain.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's fascinating. And I was gonna have something, but I'm a good listener, so I I lost it while I was listening. That's a good thing. But um, yeah, oh, that's what it is. That's what it was. Is that um I just thought it was so fascinating when you were talking about ketamine because I really don't know much about it. And the only experience I've ever had is my poor child and she broke her leg on a trampoline once. Uh it was actually four or five years ago, just a couple days ago, like the anniversary of it. And when she was when they had administered it to her, the amount of information that started coming out of her mouth was like what? What are and we know our our son has a photographic memory, he's we've measured we've had that measured, you know, and he has like uses like 99% of his working memory. We'll have to talk about him another time. You'd be fascinated with his brain. I'd love to get him in your hands. But um she uh always, you know, liked dinosaurs and all of these things when she was little, but when she uh they administered it, she it literally play by play told us every scene from Camp Cretaceous and every dinosaur that was in it, every actor's name, every you know, she literally like told us the entire series and um the doctors, and they were just everyone who was just like, Oh my gosh, you know, because she was maybe eight. And uh, but yeah, so that's that's really fascinating that it I can I can see, and I can see with um uh many, many years ago I had given my son like um what is it? The D DHA is that what it is in vitamins? Yeah, a vitamin, uh I had given him a vitamin with that in it, anyways, and he was so violent, like it was triggered this crazy violent, and I'd never seen it. You know, he was like this gentle person, and of course I took it, you know, it was like a one-time thing and it never happened again. It's just fascinating how much we don't know and how much we um I guess I am very curious and I want to be more curious and learn and and then know more. I hope everybody else does too. So I feel sad for those who don't.
SPEAKER_00:Well, if you want to learn more about ketamine, let's say I gotta remember I'm backwards here, is Brighter Days Ahead is is my book. And I use ketamine as a model for neuroplasticity-based uh treatments. Uh and so I get way down into the weeds about how neuroplasticity, excuse me, how ketamine works and what ketamine is and what S- ketamine is, bravado and and the dirty little secrets about all that. Uh, but it's filled with uh anecdotes of patients and their experiences, uh, as well as you know, my own experience. Uh uh, because you know, I had a colleague who said, How can you give this stuff to patients if you don't know what it feels like? I said, Okay, well, that's fair enough. After her badgering me for a year about it, I said, Okay, let's go ahead and try it. And so I described sort of my experience, which was absolutely beautiful, uh, and uh probably one of my cherished memories because I got to relive this very uh special moment in my life, the first day I held my adopted child. Um and uh my youngest adopted child. I have two.
SPEAKER_04:I love that.
SPEAKER_00:And uh, you know, so it was just this beautiful experience that I got to relive.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. Yeah, well, I want to learn more about it, and I'm really is it on audible by any chance?
SPEAKER_00:It's not audio. Uh okay. Again, I mean, I it's self-published on Amazon, so it's like uh okay. Do I really want to read this entire video?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, no, I get it. I get it. Oh my gosh. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you today. Um, it's wonderful conversation, and I'd love to invite you back again to you know dive deeper and and talk about more things and uh anything you might be working on that comes up and you want to let me know about, and we can uh, you know, kind of promote or or display that, and we'd love to do that too. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was a really great conversation, and I look forward to staying in touch.
SPEAKER_00:Great.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
