1st Lead U - Leadership Development
This podcast, now in Season 3, is dedicated to self-development, self-awareness, and learning to lead oneself so listeners can lead others well. If someone cannot lead themselves well, it will be difficult for them to be an effective leader of others. This podcast will help listeners understand what it means to 1st Lead U and build confidence in themselves and their leadership ability. Personal Growth Coach John Ballinger has spent 35 years developing the knowledge and material he shares with individuals, business owners, and leaders from a variety of areas.
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
Unlocking the Brain's Potential with Dr. Charles Miller - Ep 302
Welcome to First Lead you, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
John Ballinger:Hello America and welcome to First Lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.
Announcer:Now here is personal growth to developing selfless leaders Now here is personal growth coach, john Ballinger.
John Ballinger:Hello leaders and welcome to First Lead U. My name is John Ballinger and I'm here with my co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Good morning, john, how are you sir?
Douglas Ford:I'm doing great. I'm excited about the conversation that we're having today. It's kind of a new and interesting subject. I think probably not a lot of people have heard about it.
John Ballinger:It is, and when we first talked to Dr Charles Miller, who's our guest today, last year, that first hour I call it he and I were dancing. We did some mental dancing together. The last hour we're like man. We're not stepping on each other's toes and there's something here which led us to say we need the Dr Miller on our podcast. So I'm excited about the interview with Dr Miller. I'm also excited on this podcast to announce that we last year had a guest, Michelle Davis, who is the owner of a franchise called LearningRx and LearningRx. My daughter went through it, found out through the conversation with Dr Miller that his daughter had actually gone through it, and we are coordinating a podcast where all three of us are going to be on that podcast talking about how, as leaders, we can unlock brain potential, work out that brain potential and then also, with learning RX, find out if there's something that is stopping that brain from actually working the way it needs to. So I look forward to that podcast.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, uh, as you'll hear when we get into the conversation with Dr Miller, I mean, uh, I mean he uses ketamine infusion therapy, which can be a little scary to some people. I mean, we've heard a lot of different things about it, but he does a great job of explaining exactly what it is. If you're open to listening and hearing what he has to say, I think you'll have a much different perspective than you may have come to this conversation with, than you may have come to this conversation with. And, yeah, from what he does to what they do at LearningRx, to some of the things that we ask leaders to do and focus on as we go through working to help them to develop themselves, it really is a nice full circle. If you're having some significant struggles with areas, I think it's a good, like I said, circle of services that can really change some thought patterns for people.
John Ballinger:Yeah, and I want to put a disclaimer in here, because just talking to Dr Miller and talking to Michelle and even talking to us as a leader, we're not talking about an investing and an ordinal amount of time that you cause you'll.
John Ballinger:You'll say I'm too busy, I've already got, I'm covered up right now, I don't have enough time. This process actually will help buy time back, because the level of anxiety that we see leaders are in and their inability to really try to process through all the things that are happening in society today actually bog them down, slows them down, slows their team down. We're actually this process will buy back time for you and your team in a way that you can't even imagine, and we've seen it work. So I'm not just saying that, just trust me, or anything. We've seen it work. Once you take that time and that time may be a one-hour week that you need to invest in one of the three processes, but watch that one-hour week turn into much more than that and lessen the anxiety for yourself and your team. So I look forward to Dr Miller's conversation today and we hope you do too. Welcome, Dr Charles Miller.
Dr. Charles Miller:Hey, thank you for having me.
John Ballinger:So we have a special guest today with Dr Miller. I had the pleasure of spending a couple hours with Dr Miller a couple months ago and it was a conversation that we built on things that he does that are unique, that basically, once he does what he does and we're going to talk about this further in the podcast then we accept it on our side, and it ended up being a very interesting conversation and I left thinking, man, we could talk for a few hours.
Dr. Charles Miller:It's easy to do.
John Ballinger:Yeah, so, douglas, I'll turn it over to you and let you introduce Dr Miller to our audience.
Douglas Ford:Well, dr Miller, thank you for being here. As we've talked previously, we've come to understand you have a pretty interesting journey into medicine, and so if you could just share us a little bit about that journey and how you arrived at where you are today, Well, it's not a path I would have initially thought I would have chosen.
Dr. Charles Miller:So anesthesiology is my background. I got I finished graduated from Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia in 2016. And then we moved into, you know, the typical anesthesia space. Working in surgery was quite fond of cardiovascular anesthesia. One of the big things that I've always been passionate about is chronic pain management, and so that was something that kind of turned my head a little bit towards this space.
Dr. Charles Miller:Being able to address chronic pain issues in a non-opioid, non-narcotic fashion, utilizing certain anesthetics that are non-opioid or non-narcotic is is something that we don't have much of in the in the pain management space. It's very labor intensive. It's usually, you know, frequent IV infusions of things like ketamine and lidocaine, but it is a way to kind of keep pain in check. And so, as I was exploring that and learning more about ketamine infusion, I spent about 18 months researching, traveling to other facilities that already administer versions of ketamine infusion for chronic pain, and the ones that I noticed were also doing it for mental health. And so, as I learned more about this space and understood better the role of ketamine in brain health and the role pain plays in brain health and the role that, you know, feeling just in general, plays, you know, is dependent on our brain health and the way our brain communicates. Dependent on our brain health and the way our brain communicates, it kind of woke up something in me that I didn't know was there.
Dr. Charles Miller:Anesthesia is not famous for our you know, I guess, our people skills. You know we deal with the unconscious person. You know, if they talk too much, it's time to go to sleep. You know, that's that kind of mentality. So when we, you know, when I ended up in this space, I started to see a lot of people for chronic pain when we first opened our practice back here in 2019. But I was seeing an equal amount and then eventually a larger amount from a mental health perspective. Well, that was something that I needed help with. So I ended up, you know, seeking out help from some mental health counselors. Uh, you know some psychiatry friends that I had and and uh, they, you know they helped me develop my programs and, uh, to make sure that what we're doing is keeping moving people forward, but being able to utilize, you know, it's, it's uh, it it took something.
Dr. Charles Miller:You know, in anesthesia, we see the patient for a very short period of time. We hope what we do has lasting, meaningful benefit, but we don't see them weeks later. With this, for the first time ever, I was able to help people go from something that was chronic and unmanaged to something that was not so chronic and well-managed. That's what we get into medicine for to begin with. It's that piece that it's not just themanaged and that's kind of what we get into medicine for to begin with. It's that piece that it's not just the daily job, it's not just going through the motions, it's, you know, you're striving with people and then you get to celebrate with them when they win. We cry with them when they lose. It's a very rewarding space that I didn't even know existed when I got into medical field.
Douglas Ford:What brought you out of traditional medicine to start uh scenic city neurotherapy?
Dr. Charles Miller:So, starting in the hospital, it was, uh, you know there's a lot of time. One thing about working in anesthesia it is it's a very difficult pathway to get there, but once you get there it's a pretty good, good gig. It hits a lot of time off and, um, it's a well-paying job and there's a lot of comforts that come along with that space. Um, and so during my free time, during vacations, you know, I've started to look at this more and more, because I always have a project that's just me personally, always have something brewing, um, and working on the next thing. And so this was it. This is what took my attention. This became my hobby, just learning, and as I learned more, this is a we were taking. You know, we we have this ability to address this problem that is not currently well managed.
Dr. Charles Miller:Um, whether it be chronic pain or mental health issues, these patients aren't thriving. You know the wins are few and it's this area of medicine people don't really like to talk about. It's a very stigmatized area of disease processes, whether it be chronic pain or mental health, and even among the space, even among providers. You know, you hear in the background, in comments or things said about the patient with chronic pain or mental health, and even among the space, even even among providers you know, you hear in the background, in comments or things said about the patient with chronic pain or the patient with mental health issues, and we have to, you know, work around this with our process. The stigma is prevalent. And so when, in 2019, I, I looked at you know, what could I do to offer this you? What could we, what could we, how could we get this, you know, directly to the people of chattanooga.
Dr. Charles Miller:Chattanooga was where I was born and raised. I moved away for grad school and then came back here afterward. Um and uh, this was, uh, this but scenic city. Neurotherapy was what it was intended to be when it first, we first opened, was kind of just a small offering to our small town here in Chattanooga, because Chattanooga is big, it feels big sometimes, but it's not. You know, you look at our neighbors, you look at Atlanta, you look at Nashville. It's like I wasn't even sure that this was something that there's even really a clientele for or any in any in any meaningful way, and so we uh, kind of quietly opened in may of 2019 and started treating patients, one, two at a time, but I was still working full-time at the hospital by january of 2020, which was just a few months, you know. Seven, eight months later, we, uh I, had to leave the hospital. There was just no time. We were five days a week, you know was that 10, 11 hours just here at Chattanooga?
Dr. Charles Miller:It's because you know it's. You know, when you look at the numbers, like from a mental health perspective, not so much Chattanooga but just Tennessee in general has some of the worst mental health in the country. You know, the southeast is this mental health desert. We just don't have people treating mental health. Gosh, we don't want to talk about it either, do we?
John Ballinger:Oh no, it's like it's there, but let's act like it's not there it's the everything's fine culture.
Dr. Charles Miller:I say it's like we just like somebody. I say how you doing, oh, I'm great. I had a gentleman I walked in talk to not too long ago and he I said, hey, how you doing. He goes I'm great, I'm okay, I'm not good. He said it just like that. It's like because he was like trying to get that honesty out. But the reflexive I'm okay, kept trying to sneak through. But yeah, that was.
Dr. Charles Miller:But getting to this, this was, it was a, it was a process, it was an easier process than I thought it'd be. Thing for people. You think that would be. You know, I think a lot of people look at medicine and say, oh well, they've just got layers and layers upon. Well, not at a certain level, at a certain level, we have physicians doing all sorts of things, for good or for evil, um, that, uh, but then there's no oversight. Until they hurt enough people, or the or the right people, nobody says anything. Um, hence the the whole doctor death story. That was, uh, that made the headlines a few years ago. But, uh, and so we were like, when we opened this, we wanted to open something ethical, something focused on the neuroscience. So it's like I don't have to take my word for it. This isn't my personal like. I feel it does this or I think it does this.
Dr. Charles Miller:Everything I was able to tell my patients was based on existing best practice, peer-reviewed literature, and so that was actually something very unique in this space. There weren't a lot of providers out there that were actually doing what the science said, and so I think one of the big reasons that I was able to leave the hospital within a few months I had that two to three year milestone. Within a few months we hit that, and then we had to move to a bigger facility within a year just to accommodate and add extra providers. We are an anomaly in our space, and not because we have magic ketamine and fixing people's brains. It's because we're actually just doing what the literature has said to do forever, but compromises get made. One of the big issues we have in our space is compromises for provider convenience, not patient outcome. So, like in the rest of medicine, it's like we will have. If we, if it says we have to stand on our head to make this procedure work, we're gonna have to do that and that's just an accepted thing.
Dr. Charles Miller:Well, in mental health and chronic pain.
Dr. Charles Miller:We look at it and we're like, well, I mean, they're not really gonna get better anyway, so like we can do this and this is still pretty good. And so we see that compromise get made by providers and so they're just like like with ketamine therapy, they're like, well, I mean, I know the literature says we have to give it ivy to make it work, but I mean I feel like the nasal spray is still pretty good, because I don't know how to start an ivy and that's what I hear from a lot of my psychiatrists that are out there that do this is like I don't really know how to start an ivy. I'm like, well, hire a nurse, they can all do it. They all should, you know, can learn. They've had the skill at some point in the process. But yeah, it's like that's. That's been one of those things that uh, like creating something that didn't exist already, something that was a best practice center. When I learned, as I learned more about the space, the hole became very large and so we tried to fill that.
Douglas Ford:Well, that brings up a great next point, which is I think there's probably a lot of information out there that maybe misinformation or misunderstanding of what ketamine fusion therapy actually is. Yeah, so if you could just give us a few minutes on that, a short dissertation on that would be great, yeah, okay, short dissertation on that one, let me see.
Dr. Charles Miller:So what we do essentially is we use ketamine as a catalyst. Ketamine has no direct anti-depressive property, apart from you know, you're not depressed when you're under anesthesia because we turn off your brain a little bit. Um, that's not the goal, like so, ketamine pulls the brain into what we call a theta wave state when we give it you, you know, in a steady, you know steadily, over a period of time. When we do that, it's like pulling on the brain, and the brain doesn't like to be pulled on. It wants to keep consciousness. It's just so.
Dr. Charles Miller:Your whole body and your brain react by releasing higher than normal levels of a protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor, and specifically in areas that are disconnected or not communicative. And so what we've learned over the last 20 some odd years of neuroimaging is that advances have been made in that field. Is that what we thought? Mental health, specifically depression, anxiety, ptsd, what we thought was the primary mechanism? There was a chemical issue. Now we've known for about 20 years that a chemical issue does not explain depression. It very well explains schizophrenia and some of the other, like global brain issues, because there's issues with reality, there's body movement issues there's, you know, physical developmental issues there's. All sorts of concepts of reality are very much variable, well, but if you have somebody who's fully functional in every other way, they just are just sad or they don't feel where they're anxious. They feel a large anxiety response to us, but we would objectively say it's not a huge thing. Their feelings aren't matching their own objective reality. They know that this, that what they feel, is the wrong feeling for what's actually happening, like leaving the house I should be able to leave the house, but leaving the house produces this physical anxiety response. That's like somebody is like going to murder me. So that's, that's what we call a maladaptive connection that gets made.
Dr. Charles Miller:And so what we do with ketamine is we stimulate plasticity or adaptability, we improve the pathway. So we know that it's not a chemical issue, but it is a communication problem, and so a localized communication problem, specifically up here in your frontal lobe. We, you know, we, we see it. Maybe if it's not the path, maybe if it's not the chemicals, maybe it's the pathways the chemicals stimulate, if it's not the cars, maybe it's the roads, you know, but something's not communicating correctly. And so with some advances in neuroimaging, like using a functional MRI with blood flow studies or spec scan, we were able to better image areas of the brain that just aren't communicating and these neural lesions that develop in the frontal lobe secondary to heightened emotional stress, trauma.
Dr. Charles Miller:Because trauma is hyperactive neural communication, your brain starts firing rapidly, like a motor that runs too hard for too long. Your brain does this wonderful thing it unplugs itself, creating these neural lesions, and it's a form of protecting yourself. So what we're doing with ketamine essentially is we are stimulating dendritic growth or the plugging back in. We're taking what unplugged during trauma, what unplugged during prolonged periods of heightened stress or even unhealthy coping for a period of time and essentially stimulating the brain to plug itself back in. When your brain reacts to the ketamine, the reaction is the release of this protein that stimulates growth over days and weeks after the treatment. So we're not fixing the brain while they're here in the office.
Dr. Charles Miller:I think that's what a lot of people imagine it to be. It's like oh, it's like yeah, of course they don't feel bad, they're under ketamine. No, that's not what we're doing. Literally nothing meaningful or lasting happens in the office. It's not from a feeling or a thought. You could just joy your way out of depression, people would have done so by now. This is a physical injury. It's like depression and anxiety are closer related to a broken bone than it is to a thinking issue. Thinking is the product of this injury. So whereas you look at something objectively and your feelings match that, this person looks at it and their injury causes a misfire.
Dr. Charles Miller:And what we're doing is adding plasticity, adding back the adaptability for the brain to kind of autocorrect. This problem, a maladaptive connection, is one that you're not able to change, even though you show your brain differently. So like if I look at a sink full of dishes and I say that sink full of dishes is just too overwhelming to do, and then finally I work up the courage and the strength and actually go do it, it's about 10 minutes of light work. So next time I go do the dishes, your brain should say remember that that was 10 minutes of light work, not a big deal. But instead they feel that mountain again that they got to climb to get to go to do those dishes. That's maladaptive. Their brain's not adapting to the new knowledge they've gained. Even though you've shown your brain that that's not true, it still is clinging to the lie. And that's what we're doing is just adding adaptability, just allows the brain to better adapt back to.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I was thinking on the way over here.
John Ballinger:I came through an exit to get to this building that we're in and they're doing a lot of construction out of that road and the lanes were going down right and people were hitting the brakes and they couldn't follow the. And I was thinking on the way over here. We were talking about path excuse me, pathways and opening them up, and a lot of people when they they come up on something, it's like putting the brakes on Right and they don't know what to do and where's this car going to go and where's that car going to go? And then you see on the other back up, so the ketamine is everybody's brakes are coming on that. I don't know what to do. You're opening up that pathway to get on the other side of. Oh, that's what I do I merge, I slow down, I let this person over and everybody's working together. But your brain should be doing that same thing when you come up on occurrences.
Dr. Charles Miller:And most of the time we are. We're constantly learning and adapting. Your brain is constantly remodeling, breaking down and rebuilding based on new experiences. It's this ever evolving thing. So the person you were when you were 10 versus when you were 20, versus when 30, all the way up, wherever you are, you know that is the same person you've always been, but it's also not the same person at each of those milestones. You know it's a. It's also not the same person at each of those milestones. You know it's. You've adapted based off of new experiences. And a maladaptive brain is something that can be due to the injury. It can even be due to the treatment some of the treatments we use.
Douglas Ford:Well, so, speaking of treatments, you're an officeeer, very professional, got it set up. You have professionals who are administering this. Why is it good to have medical professionals working in this space?
Dr. Charles Miller:and not doing self-therapy. That's a good idea, that's a good conversation. So you should never give yourself anesthesia. That's kind of the answer. So this is an anesthetic and so the risk with any ketamine administration of what's called a laryngospasm it's a life-threatening anesthetic side effect. The risk with ketamine administration in any form, at any dose that registers is about 1 in 300. It is a rarity but it's not an impossibility.
Dr. Charles Miller:I've administered over 27,000 IV ketamine infusions in the last six years. I've had one laryngospasm ever, but it's a potentially life-threatening issue. So, being anesthesia, you're trained, I could have any. I could have either of you intubated, sedated in 30 seconds, the right tools in front of me. We could do that. That's one of them. What? That's what we, why I'm here. Um, that is uh.
Dr. Charles Miller:If you're doing this at home and you've had a recent upper respiratory infection which makes your airway react, a laryngospasm is when the reactive airway, the muscles of the larynx, spasm and close and your airway just snaps shut and it holds itself shut until you either pass out and the muscles release or you potentially die. It's a really bad thing. We've had two instances of self-administered ketamine in Chattanooga in the last couple of years that I'm aware of, and only because I treat a lot of law enforcement and they tell me because most of the time when someone's found down with ketamine in their system it's immediately marked as illicit use. They don't look to see did they have a prescription for this? Are they taking this? But the thing is, why would anybody get it illicitly when you can just a 15 minute phone call and you've got it at your front door? You know it's like it's not a big deal to get it anymore with these programs that are out there. It's incredible. The lack of accountability is insane. So you can order this, yeah, and have it shipped to your front door, sadly, yes, but it has no mental health benefit because it's a tablet. But it has no mental health benefit because it's a tablet. So the people feel weird. They get enough to feel weird, but they're not holding their therapeutic blood level at the right place for the right amount of time to get the mental health benefit and so that means they've got to take it again tomorrow and the next day. So they're just a little high all the time. And when you're a little high all the time, guess what? You're not depressed, you're a little high all the time at you're a little high all the time. Guess what? You're not depressed. Yeah, you're a little high all the time, at least for a little while, until you finally figure out hey, I'm just high all the time and some people are perfectly content with that, but that is not ketamine therapy, that's just taking ketamine.
Dr. Charles Miller:Um, when you do this, you accept all the risk. The provider accepts all the reward. It's like I could do this. I would quadruple my income. I wouldn't need an office, I could do this from my upstairs bedroom and just do telehealth calls with people and just mail them ketamine to their house. But then I'd have to live with me knowing that what I'm giving them is at best a placebo therapy.
Dr. Charles Miller:Like I felt weird and I think I feel better. It's like no, nothing changed in your brain from feeling weird. Feeling weird is not necessary to get better. Feeling weird is a side effect. I wish that were that case. It's like even with the psychedelic therapies, they're not psychedelic therapies. You're not thinking your way to better. That's one of the reasons mdma didn't make it through the fda this last time is because the study that they had, besides being just a, just an abysmally conducted study, just a terribly conducted study. Um, it was. Everybody involved was a psychedelic enthusiast. It's like the people that already take MDMA recreationally at home, which is what MDMA. It's what we call ecstasy. It's a party drug. You can't get that milled to your front door.
John Ballinger:No, you can't get that milled to your front door, not in this state.
Dr. Charles Miller:But people do and people get it, but it's an illicit drug right now. But what we're looking at is that when we alter the brain without putting the brain to sleep in the right way over a period of time, the brain reacts and the brain's reaction is the treatment. The protein your brain releases is the treatment, and so everything about what we give and how we give it needs to be surrounding optimizing that protein release to get the best possible treatment. And if you don't do it, if you don't take ketamine IV, then you didn't do ketamine therapy, you just took some ketamine. And that's a really important distinction.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, no, that's a great distinction Like you're not going to get better, we're not going to get like it's this is not the same thing.
Dr. Charles Miller:It's it's this is not the same thing.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, yeah, that's a very, I think, a very good point to make, that what, what goes on in your office and what somebody thinks they may be able to do for themselves at home two totally different things. And so that from our previous conversations, that was great. So we're I'm going to ask you this question, then we're going to take a break and then we're going to get into a little more heady discussion. Pardon the pun, my favorite part um.
Dr. Charles Miller:So who really is your ideal customer? Like who, who does this work best for? So my ideal customer here is so it's the, the patient, who is doing all the work and not getting the gain, you know it's like they've tried medications and you know it's like they seem to help, but I don't really good.
Dr. Charles Miller:I just feel less bad when it works. You know I don't. I miss out, I don't feel good, though that's. One thing that we see in mental health treatment is that all of the metrics we use to measure are just do you feel less depressed? Well, you can feel no depression and not be happy, and so it's. I think the goal of the patient needs to match the goal of the provider, and what we've seen in mental health treatment so far it's been very much symptom management.
Dr. Charles Miller:What we're doing does nothing with feeling. The feeling is the product. The feeling is what is spit out. What we're doing is we are optimizing the mechanism that allows your brain to feel. So it's one step before the emotion. So the emotion that comes out is a much more accurate and appropriate emotion based on the objective understanding of the world, which is kind of this fixed, locked in thing that you have. You know we can pretend that this desk is a toothbrush, but it's not a toothbrush and if you try to brush your teeth with it, you're not going to get very far. You're welcome to try, but it's not the objective reality. That's the agreed upon right. This is a desk. Is it a good desk, bad desk, happy desk, sad desk? That's the subjective one, but the objective reality is it's just a desk, and so, feeling that this is a desk, and even if you hate this desk, it elicits the right amount of hate or the right amount of joy, or you know it's like.
Dr. Charles Miller:It's like it's just, it's just the desk and it's okay, you know, and that's what it's all about gauging the emotions. And so it's like. The patient that we're looking for is the one that when they do, they're doing things that should feel good, Like they objectively look at their life and say this life is pretty good, but I don't feel it. I'm not feeling the good. That's the patient. That feeling the good, that's the patient. That means the mechanism that allows them to feel or that produces the emotions is misfiring. We're maladaptive. That's literally all we treat. We make that fire in a more appropriate way.
John Ballinger:So you started the clinic in 2019 and COVID hits in 2020. Yeah, that was something. Yeah, and have you noticed a different clientele coming in here post-COVID than you were dealing with?
Dr. Charles Miller:pre-COVID? That's a good question. Yeah, so we see a lot more of they call it brain fog. Now, if you talk to somebody who struggles with the new onset post-COVID brain fog and somebody who has lived with chronic depression and you just look at symptomatology, the symptoms match very closely. It's just the person who's lived with depression for a long time also has sadness because they haven't felt in so long, whereas the person who struggles with brain fog doesn't identify as depressed. They just can't think. Their brain just stopped working.
Dr. Charles Miller:And I think that's a real important distinction to make is like depressed people aren't sad, they're depressed. Their brain function is depressed or suppressed, it's it's. They're not able to think. Everything takes a lot of work and that's part of these lesions that develop on the brain. And so what we're able to do for depression, you see, literally lights up what we see with this post-COVID injury like brain fog. It decreases inflammation and increases connectivity. That's what we do. And since that's the primary mechanism of what we see with COVID and post-COVID brain fog, like even with the patients who were intubated in the ICUs, they were getting a combination of propofol and ketamine during, you know, as their anesthetic. The ketamine was there to preserve brain funk, to keep the brain active and to keep the you know, the respiratory drive intact and all those things. But it also helped to prevent, you know, lasting neural injury to these patients.
John Ballinger:So a person that went through and I know we're up against a break but a person that went through and came out COVID brain fog, that didn't go in the hospital and didn't get that, can ketamine help that person that still is under brain fog?
Dr. Charles Miller:Yeah, because it's not dead tissue. They didn't have a stroke. There were people that did, and that's a whole different thing and we do work with those people as well, but it's a slower, altered process. Um, but people who just have that brain fog, it's like your, your brain, just unplugged.
Dr. Charles Miller:Secondary to neural inflammation because that's the ugly thing about covid is covid. You know. It takes the immune system and just turns it up the noise, turns it all the way to the, to a 10, you know, to where all of a sudden your own immune system starts attacking you like an autoimmune disease and the neuroinflammation causes rapid lesion creation. So all the areas that worked last week all of a sudden stopped working. I went from full function last week to altered function or less this week, in a very short amount of time. So the sooner we're able to address that, the better. But even if it's been years, sooner we're able to address that, the better. But even if it's been a years, you know we can turn that back on and it's not a big piece to turn on. It's like people at the part of your brain that you're just aware of, that you know you interact with in any meaningful way, is, uh, it's not a huge piece of your brain what we're doing. It's not this massive like shift. It's a very small change. It's just a very meaningful.
Douglas Ford:Well, we will take that break that you mentioned and we'll be back in just a few minutes with more discussion with Dr Charles Miller. So welcome back.
John Ballinger:Uh, we're with dr charles miller who, uh, in the previous uh questions that he had gone back and forth with Mr Ford, told us kind of his journey into medicine, into starting his own clinic, into just the process of learning how to administer ketamine in a powerful what I think is a powerful way to help someone that thought there was nowhere to turn to. I think that's. I've tried this, I've tried that. It's like taking your car to four different mechanics and it still won't start the way it's supposed to. And then, like, what am I going to do with this thing? I've spent a bunch of money on it, nobody can figure it out. And then you find that person that says, oh no, this is this. And you're relieved. Finally and I imagine you get a lot of that Finally I get some help that I've been looking for.
Dr. Charles Miller:Yeah Well, I think that's the neat thing about what we do is whether they be somebody spent the last 20 years trying everything, or this is a new problem for them and they didn't want to go the route, traditional route of medication, all this stuff. It doesn't have a tremendously high success rate, at least what we would consider success. Success is the remission or relief of something. If we don't see greater than 50% remission or relief of symptoms, then below that it falls into that window of placebo effect. I'm not saying that antidepressants are placebos. I think the term that's often used is what we call similar to an active placebo. It means it's doing something, it's changing things, but is that change, the change that is beneficial to the patient, or is it what the patient even wants? So you get some patients that take it and, as the antidepressant limits their ability to feel, they feel less.
Dr. Charles Miller:Now, feeling less can feel better for some people, based on what's happening. If the world's blown up around you, feeling less is a really good thing, you know. And they're like ah, and then other people take it and they're just like oh, that made me feel worse. And I'm like what do you mean? And like well, that's what it does. That's its limitation. Well, that's all it can be. You can't feel better with an antidepressant. You can just I mean in that case, like better is a truly subjective term. You know you can't feel good with an antidepressant. You can feel less bad, which is a really good thing for people in that you know that's where they are. And I tell people all the time it's like if your world's blowing up around you. This is not the treatment for you, because this doesn't make you feel good. This makes you feel everything correctly, and so that means, if your world's blowing up around you, I feel bad, you know, because feeling bad is a very viable and correct emotion for that situation. It makes us change what's happening.
John Ballinger:But so we had. We got into an interesting conversation last time that that I've used, and it's you use the analogy that someone comes in here with their windows fogged up in the car. Yeah, and you unfog the windows, but they still have to work to work their brain and make make it healthier than what it was when you, when it sat there with fogged up windows Can we kind of.
Dr. Charles Miller:Yes, I have so many analogies and I explain things to different people in different ways. I try to pick up in our conversation we spend about an hour sitting and talking. That's how this all begins. So I try to learn about them. I help them best understand this process because they determine what success looks like. It's not a win unless they say it's a win. You know, it doesn't matter, if you see, because if we were relying on just the, the process has a 100 success rate of stimulating dendritic growth. Now, is that a meaningful improvement for patients? Well, you know that depends on what they do with it, and so they know what to expect, but they're more likely to use it. So that's part of our education.
Dr. Charles Miller:And using the analogy to explain that you know the fogged up window, or I'll use cars, like I used earlier there's or even this, like an image that clearing up the. You know it's like we, we, you know unf, unfog the windows, not. So we don't change the image here, where you can see the details and you can work better with that means it doesn't make the world out there change. It didn't change, in fact, as you see it clear. You may see things you just don't like, but that's a good thing and it's, you know, that helps us address them. You know it's like when we feel bad. That's you know. If we feel bad for a reason, I can't fix that, I don't want to fix that. We need to change what's happening. If I feel bad for no reason, that's where we can work is. You know, feeling neutral should be what you feel. So it's like.
Dr. Charles Miller:Your brain is, like I say, is like billion synapses firing simultaneously. They create the image of a human being. Now, think of it like a billion dots of paint sprayed on the wall. They create a portrait. Those billion dots of paint, they're still just dots of paint, but the image is life, and I mean so detailed and it has all of these facets like the image has never been before, never be again. It's one of the most incredible things about how they work and how we create a sense of self.
Dr. Charles Miller:But realize that you are not just one piece of your now. The part that you're aware of is the guy who runs the moment here in your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. He's the one that's. That's actually. You know. He's the one reacting to the world and paying attention to what's happening, but he only exists literally right, this very second. That means when I started this sentence, like that's already starting to move into memory, it's. And so when we understand that, then we start to understand that the goal is not to control the brain. The goal is to improve reactivity for whatever comes up that is out of our control.
John Ballinger:Process it through it, manage it and move to the next thing yeah, which is unique because it firstly do our goal is to take someone in a leadership position, help them unlock things that have created roadblocks and their and their pathway. And we've seen business leaders, executives, lean into that and we've hit a roadblock and seen them run from that Like I don't want to get past what that is. And this, this next question that we're going into, with unblocking the windows or unfogging the windows, now we're going to put the car on the path and possibly run into that road, what we find. And now I've got to try and figure out how to get them past that roadblock.
John Ballinger:Uh, out there, and I find a lot of time uh, that that pain that they're going to have to go through to get past, because a lot of times there's trauma it could be childhood trauma, it could just be trauma from the past of something that they dealt with in their life has caused that roadblock and they just said you know, I'd rather not go there, yeah, but what that's doing is limiting their ability to take all those dots on that wall and have all those people that are responsible for making decisions and they're freezing or they're fawning, they're just laying down or not doing anything, or they're freezing and their people are looking at them saying what do you mean? Do, boss? I need to make a decision. That person is literally standing there. I don't know what to do yeah.
Dr. Charles Miller:So we see this a lot with our. We treat a lot of entrepreneurs. We treat a lot of people who own or run business. That's the stress that comes along with. That is next level.
Dr. Charles Miller:It's not a job you go in and clock in, clock out. It doesn't turn off when you know your brain is still going. It's very. You know you're still pondering the problems of the day or anticipating the problems of tomorrow. This is where our functional intelligence does not necessarily match our emotional intelligence, our self-awareness even and that's the most dangerous thing for a leader to have is the lack of self-awareness. He doesn't see what others see. He doesn't see how he sounds, how he makes others feel.
Dr. Charles Miller:To be a successful leader, you have to understand yourself. You have to understand, you have to practice healthy coping, otherwise the wear and tear on the brain that's very helpful when you're working doesn't turn off when you go home and the brain doesn't rest. That means tomorrow you start with a little less. And so I tell everybody it's like you don't have to have me, I'm here to clean up the mess you made, like your brain is made to do. You know to function well. It's like you're not born with a mental health. You're born with a predisposition to develop a mental health. It means that, like some people's brains don't produce, they produce enough of this protein that rebuilds the brain when we rest at night, brain-derived neurotrophic factor that we stimulate lots of while we're sleeping. But this protein you don't have to come here to get it, it's like brain makes it. It's some people just don't release it as a factor. So they're not handicapped, they're fully functional in every way, but they.
Dr. Charles Miller:This is where we see a lot of the genetic. You know, like my grandfather had depression, my dad had depression, I have depression. A lot of it is those. Those people have to work harder to maintain their mental health. They can do it, but whereas everybody else gets away with minimal maintenance, they have a little extra. And also, too, it's learn our coping skills from our parents, or we learn how not to cope from our parents. And once again, living in the South, everything's fine and cold. We just don't talk about it. Have you noticed that old men just get quiet? And then they sit there at the TV as they get older? And that's the reason being, as they develop severe anxiety disorders to where everything unfamiliar, unexpected, is unmanageable, it just it lights. Lights them up, not because the world got harder, but their ability to process has diminished.
John Ballinger:Absolutely yeah. And so, being in psychology, uh, I really studied the brain, the lobes, what those lobes are supposed to be doing, how they react, and I've noticed that some people's lobes that should be doing something just don't do it. And so can ketamine help the pathways to those lobes, waking some of those lobes or maybe darker.
Dr. Charles Miller:Yeah, that's the whole goal of what we do is to help the brain communicate better with itself and with the body. So by increasing plasticity, we're increasing pathways, we're increasing options of path. We're taking existing pathways, expanding them. We are taking, you know, or taking the brain and allowing it to develop new, healthy, undifferentiated pathways. Meaning that he built a lot after ketamine we haven't allocated. It's like now we get to map, get to create new processes. That's actually done in practice. This is why I say the ideal patient is one that's already doing all the good stuff. When I do give them the ketamine, their brain rapidly maps to what they're doing, not the way they did it 20 years ago. You know, 15-year-old us should have no say-so in how we react to the world today. They are not capable or competent to function in the world today, but they do. They programmed our reactivity to the world all the way back then and we have this hard wiring that's built in.
Dr. Charles Miller:That's why when something happens, it can elicit an emotion. You didn't choose that emotion. Nobody would choose to feel good or choose to feel bad. They would always choose the good. We would never choose. We would choose pleasure. We would choose good. We would choose happy. We would never just sit around and say I choose to feel bad. Now we can perpetuate bad feelings with negative behaviors, but that's the symptom's the symptom, that's the side effect that presents from the loss of communication. That's where the stigma like people look at and they're like I don't understand why they struggle. If they just not think about that. Wouldn't that just be great if we? Oh, I didn't think, I guess I would just stop thinking it. They can't do that or they would do that. Nobody wants to be here, it's just they do get in print and it becomes comfort in their own misery rather than because they're exhausted from being, you know, living like this, to where change, even change for the better, is not I not, it's not possible but coming in here just I mean unfogging the windows.
John Ballinger:That's not the end up. There has to be work. And I use the analogy you go to the gym to work out to get your keep your body healthy. Yeah, you have to do your brain the same way. You have to work your brain at all the pieces too.
Dr. Charles Miller:You can't just go in and just do upper body and skip leg day. Right, it's like, because leg day is no fun, it's uncomfortable, and so you end up see a lot with our, our high functioning. You know, leaders out there is that they're really good at this one thing and then everything else kind of sucks. You know it's like they're on their fifth marriage or they're on their you know it's like it's why? Why? Because they never learned to to emote properly or to express those emotions clearly. And so they get married and then they you know it's just like don't work. Why? Well, because they were just so locked in emotionally, like their business takes every, that's, that's where they thrive and they're at the office. And so they end up saying I'm just going to be there all the time. It's our workaholic, that's the place where I win, it's where I'm king. When I go home, like that's not a fun place to be. So control, control is this beautiful illusion we've all created.
John Ballinger:What steps. Someone comes in here and they've had trauma. I know we talked about PTSD. You mentioned law enforcement officers earlier on. They're dealing with a different set of trauma than the average person deals with. This process actually will kill not just that type but other traumas that have gone on. Yeah, okay.
Dr. Charles Miller:You have all big P's and little t's, complex traumas versus. You know simple, obvious ones. You know simple, obvious ones. It's like blown up in afghanistan, or you know, or frequent exposure to other people scraping off, like our brains aren't meant to do either of those things, like we aren't meant to understand or comprehend or cope, and so we have to stop practice healthy cope. But you know, what I see in this demographic in particular is, rather than cope, they sedate. What do I take? A zen or I I go, I just drink a fifth of a bourbon.
John Ballinger:We do that in the south, don't?
Dr. Charles Miller:we drink a lot we drink a lot yeah try to mask well, it's like it's a socially acceptable, substance-based coping mechanism and it's like it's. It's like I'm not saying that you know, you, we should all quit drinking. Not good for us, but I mean, everything doesn't have to be good for us. A bowl of ice cream periodically is not good for us. It's okay, it's a treat and that's what it should be. If you're going to have a drink, it should be a treat. It shouldn't be something you have to do. If you have to do it, then it's a medication, then it's a medication and then you're like it's so. People would much prefer and it's much easier in the moment to sedate rather than and so that is go-to and we've sadly in modern medicine, we have facilitated the symptoms.
Dr. Charles Miller:Take a pill for this anxiety. It's like realizing that we can, in process we can work, that the pill is good in beginning, but if we have to stay on it forever. That's why we see people with chronic anxiety who take Xanax or take a benzodiazepine Like 10 years later their anxiety's way worse. Why? Well, because it never had to use a coping skill. All the heavy lifting was done by the pill, and so they get all the way over here and now they can't function without this pill, apart from the physical dependence. Yeah.
John Ballinger:I talked to people, though, so I've been seeing my psychiatrist for 18 years.
Dr. Charles Miller:I'm like oh, something's wrong, yeah, say that with any other specialty. I've been seeing my orthopedist for 18 years.
John Ballinger:I'm just like then you need to find a new orthopedist, because whatever he's doing is not working. Yeah, it's like we're here to treat a problem, we're not here to manage exactly which which. This last question was one of the ones I remember I asked toward the end of our last meeting and I'm a firm believer in this and it appeared that you were, but we both think that the brain is capable of much more than what people actually know it's capable of.
Dr. Charles Miller:I agree with that. I agree with that. Now, it's not infinitely capable. We all have limitations. It can do what it does, and I think the better statement would probably be it's far more capable than any of us are using it for.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I like that statement.
Dr. Charles Miller:Yeah, because when we say that it's like if nothing is true, then everything is wrong, it's like that's I like this, like yeah, it's like it's. Um, it's. Because we say that it's like if nothing is true, that everything is wrong, it's like actually it's. That's. That's not what we want either. That's the other wrong mentality. It's like what we want is to say your brain can self-manage the moment, any moment. Whatever comes up, your brain can manage it with the right processes, with the right practice-based coping, the right functionality. And when you do make a mistake, or when you do maybe not cope so well, or maybe when something bigger than this is just in your capability to handle happens to you you had no part in it, but just being in the right place at the wrong time what we do is we help catch that up. This is the one piece in mental health that's always missing. You've never had a treatment that does. What we do is we help catch that up. That's what. This is the one piece in mental health that's always missing.
Dr. Charles Miller:You've never had a treatment that does what these do, apart from what we did see with, you know, electroconvulsive therapy, but we had to produce a small amount of brain damage. To do that, and that's what we, you know, that's what ect is is. We, could, you know, provoke a seizure in the frontal lobe and and that seizure creates micro damage. The brain reacts, floods the area that is damaged with a protein, the brain grabs neurotrophic factor to protect itself from it, and so we lose a little to gain a lot, and this is why ECT is actually a successful therapy. It's just there's a cost to it, and so the new literature coming out is showing that ketamine actually produces a stronger BDNF response without creating injury. What we do is we simulate a disconnect using an anesthetic that's physiologically passive. It goes in quickly, it triggers your brain to release its proteins, then it gets out and there's no significant deficit remaining.
John Ballinger:On the lead-in to First Lead U, we use the word self-awareness and emotional intelligence. How important is that?
Dr. Charles Miller:to leadership, the leadership that I think that is the description, but that's the pathway to leadership. It's like know what you can do, know what you can't and delegate that you know. It's like that's the self-awareness, um, but uh, what was the other thing? Emotional, emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is, is, is the practice of taking care of your brain. So, like I said, functional intelligence, like I'm a, you know you'd be a really smart guy. I will sit in that room. You know. It's like in my space I'm a smart guy, I write paper. I, you know, I I create educational programs.
Dr. Charles Miller:I will sit there for nine hours and not move, though that is not a testament to my good emotional health or emotional health, my emotional intelligence, to say, hey, this is bad for your brain. You need to get your butt up and take care of you, because when I get done, at the end of the day, I feel like somebody just like literally drained my brain out of my ear and like not another thought I can hold. That's not a good way to function. And if I don't take care of myself for the next couple days after I do something silly, you know, I feel it and I'm less, and while what we do here to just turn things back on. It's like that's I gotta. That's not what I want. I don't want to have to come and do something like this all the time.
Dr. Charles Miller:This is a catch up. This is not maintenance for the rest of the clock. This gets everything working again. So now the wiser, smarter version of you once we turn everything back to 100%, you can keep it up there just by behaving, just by doing what you know is right, using that emotional intelligence we all possess. Now there are some people who have fewer emotional requirements. I call them the happy idiots of the world. They're not dumb people, they're just emotionally dumb. They feel five emotions and one of them's hungry. It's like that's all they feel in the whole world. And they're happier people. Life is easier.
John Ballinger:But that's true for the leadership, which is who we are speaking to the importance of them understanding their emotional intelligence and their self-awareness, because they're people who are less self-aware and less emotionally intelligent. They have to absorb all that and be able to communicate with them.
Dr. Charles Miller:Yeah. And from a leadership perspective, you have to look at your employee or you have to look at your people under you and say, hey, just because you think you can do more, we're not going to do more. Like you could work 50 hours a week, yeah, no, we're not going to do more Like the work 50 hours a week, yeah, no, we're not going to do that. Why? Well, because I know that's bad for you. Even if you don't, you know we're not going to have like I'm going to get less from you. I know that in the future that's going to burn me down the way, because I will burn out, right, okay, he doesn't see the decline, he only sees where he lands.
John Ballinger:Yeah, so I think the takeaway, so our brains are more capable than what a lot of people realize. Yeah, some are born. It could be trauma, it could be DNA things that we've said for all three it's going to be three seasons. What ketamine can do is the elasticity that's not the right word Plasticity.
Dr. Charles Miller:Plasticity, yeah like optimization.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I kind of started relating that to a stent being put in and opening up the heart so that the blood flows better. But you're not putting a stent in, you're just opening it up.
Dr. Charles Miller:It's not going to add features to the heart Right, it's going to take the heart and let it work the way it's designed to work.
John Ballinger:That's just kind of the when you were talking about opening it up. I was thinking about a stent.
Dr. Charles Miller:That's a really good analogy yeah. I'm going to steal that one.
John Ballinger:Okay, so Dr Charles Miller, man, it's been a pleasure.
Douglas Ford:Yes, thank you very much for being with us today.
John Ballinger:Thanks for having me with some other guests and we'll have some joint conversations in the future. I'd love to do that. Ketamine treatment therapy, Mr Ford.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I mean that was a very interesting conversation. Dr Miller has some great thoughts. I mean, he said and it seems obvious through the conversation he could talk about that all day. He's just, I mean, and it's great to see somebody that's excited and and well-studied and understands what he's doing in a way that can truly help people.
John Ballinger:You know, you know that, you know, you said that, and I was thinking about talking to Michelle last year. When people approach me, us, especially me that's doing more of the heavy lifting on this. The three the three of us together have made the statement we love seeing people become successful. We love helping people reach versions themselves that they didn't think they had inside of us. There's something to people that are crazy, like the three of us, that want to take on the challenges of what's going on with somebody that's impeding their success and burdening ourselves with it, but then seeing the fruits of that labor on the other side of it, and that's one thing that I can say the three of us love to see. We love seeing people grow.
Douglas Ford:Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I think, like I said, remembering back to a conversation with Michelle last year and then talking to Dr Miller and obviously just your enthusiasm, and that's the whole reason we're doing this podcast is because you want to help people grow and learn and be the best versions of themselves.
John Ballinger:And the other thing that I found interesting as we've talked about some of this is everybody kind of understands their component of helping somebody grow and it's not like this doesn't solve all the problems and this doesn't solve all the problems, but if you start putting some of these things together, you start getting a more complete vision and understanding of how someone can truly get to that best version yeah, I was thinking so we we talk a lot about people you know will run to working their body out physically and you'll hear them say, well, tomorrow's leg day, and tomorrow's chest day, and tomorrow's this day, all we're talking with the three of us is there's just a little bit of different component that each one of us bring to the table, specific to the brain, that's going to help you overall with your ability to be cognitively more sound and healthy, which helps you tremendously as a leader.
John Ballinger:So, um, I hope you, uh, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Dr Miller and we look forward to next week's podcast. And remember, in order to lead your team well, you must first lead you. We'll see you next time you.
