Brain, Hope, Reality: PTSI not PTSD | Hosted by Dr. Eugene Lipov

Dr. Eugene Lipov (00:02.921)
You ready? Go ahead, sir. We're recording.

bill kubota (00:05.743)
Just say your name. We don't and what else say underneath you again?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (00:09.953)
Thank you. Dr. Eugene Lipov, E-U-G-E-N-E, less name L-I-P-O-V.

bill kubota (00:17.634)
Dr. Lipoff, I didn't realize this, it's been over a decade since you've been looking into the idea of changing the terminology for post-traumatic stress. What's, why is it taking so long to get that change going?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (00:34.629)
If I may, let's go back to the history. So the first person who came up with the term was not me. It was Dr. Frank Uggberg, a very famous psychiatrist who came up with the term Stockholm syndrome. So, you know, he's been around a long time. So in about 2009, he came up with that term. He and Pete Cirelli, a four-star general who was in charge of suicide prevention for the US Army went to the American Psychiatric Association in 2012.

when they were changing from DSM 4 to DSM 5 and they asked to change the name to save lives because they felt it's over stigmatizing and it leads to death. So I got into the action about 2016 because I became friends with Dr. Frank Ogberg. I'm an anesthesiologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. And then so I came up with a treatment for.

PTSD or PTSD, which I think is the right term. And since Frank is getting kind of older in years, he's 86 now, he kind of passed over the responsibility to me. So to give you a direct answer why it has not happened, I think there is a number of reasons. I think reason number one, doctors in general are very slow to adopt any change. The name PTSD.

was coined in 1980 in DSM-3. So it's a disorder. The reason the name should be changed, that's what Frank believes and I believe, is because it's a biological change. When somebody has a severe trauma or multiple small traumas, fight and flight system activates part of the brain called the amygdala. And as long as it stays like that, people have symptoms. So before people called PTSD,

an invisible wound because you can't really see it. It's not like a broken leg, which is easy to see. But with a modern technology such as functional MRI and PET scans, you can actually see the trauma.

bill kubota (02:44.758)
You can physically, you can actually see it on a scan, which means it's an injury.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (02:48.777)
Yes, sir.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (02:52.309)
That's precisely right. That's our point. I lost your picture, my friend.

bill kubota (02:57.69)
Yeah, hang on, my battery's going. I'm plugging in my power now. Hold on a second. This is, it would have been better if my computer would work. Let's see if it works.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (03:10.083)
It is going that way.

bill kubota (03:12.334)
Am I back? I'm back. There it is.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (03:14.217)
You're back. OK, so you want to ask the last question again, and we'll go from there.

bill kubota (03:23.156)
You can see it in brain scans. It's a physical injury.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (03:28.257)
That's correct. The other part to keep in mind, when you have something physical, let's say a broken leg in a dog and a broken leg in a human looks the same, right? You can actually see an extra broken leg. So PTSD happens in dogs. In fact, 25% of dogs from military come back from Iraq have something called the veterinary PTSD. I was the first one also to treat a dog with PTSD using a stellate.

So my point is the physiologic response to the body. So it's nothing mysterious about it. It's the real deal. You can actually see it on scans.

bill kubota (04:10.698)
Okay, I was worried that froze up there. That's okay But now let's take this back to I know with PTSD coined in 1980 that was really late it related to Vietnam vets, but These issues have gone back since probably the beginning of warfare right

Dr. Eugene Lipov (04:11.745)
I know. I didn't freeze up. I don't know.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (04:33.309)
Well, it started actually in the first description. Most description of PTSD has been military. So it was called the tremble by the Romans. So 2000 years ago. But if you think about it, the people who usually suffer the most PTSD is actually the abused women. As long as humanity has been around, PTSD has been with us. So the first name for PTSD in a modern era was soldier's heart, civil war.

Then it became battle, it was shell shock, World War I. Battle fatigue, World War II. Vietnam syndrome, Vietnam. And then PTSD came around.

bill kubota (05:18.234)
Why is it important to change that name now?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (05:23.273)
The reason it's important is because as Pete Cirelli and Frank Ogberg have said, if you can get rid of PTSD name, people will be less stigmatized and they will seek care and survive. So interestingly enough, nobody's put it to a test before. So I did a survey, which I published in 2023 and presented the American Psychiatric Association, the body that controls naming.

And we found based on 3,000 people, we did a survey, about 1,500 people wrote us back. Turns out, yes, if you change the name, the stigma will get better. So if stigma gets better, there's a number of studies that shows that the stigma can be removed, then people will seek care, and they're not gonna die.

bill kubota (06:13.494)
But on top of that, we're not just talking war vets. Now we're talking people throughout society that have sustained trauma. Other people.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (06:23.713)
Correct. Because if you look at PTSD rates, so approximately 2 to 10 million people in the military or veterans have PTSD. About 10 times more of that happen. There's 10 times more women with PTSD after sexual assault and other trauma than from all the military combined. So all type of people get PTSD.

In our offices, for example, here in Stella Center, we treat children, women, men, special forces, police, victims of crime. There's no difference. It's the same. It's one commonality is a fight and flight system is stuck in an odd position. So we're trying to reverse that.

bill kubota (07:13.066)
Well, the key here is to change it in the DSM. That's what you really want to do, right?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (07:18.145)
So let me tell you what I've done about that so far. In order to change the name in a modern era, what you need to do is you need to send an official proposal to the DSM, DSM-5 committee, and say, I would like to change the name. What I find most interesting is the number one requirement to change the name, you need to be able to demonstrate that the current name causes harm. If you can demonstrate that based on their

website, they will change the name. Right, that's reasonable. So based on at least my publication, clearly keeping the name causes harm because it causes stigma, which we know causes problems. So right now DSM has received all the materials they need to make a decision as of September 7th of this year. So it's going to the steering committee.

and they're trying to make a decision now. That's why it's so important right now to anybody who's interested in name to help that happen. To do that, one, your help would be amazing to spread the word. Two, on my website, which is drEugenLipov.com, if you hit the button PTSI, there is a letter writing campaign there. People can click on it and sign their names. That gets saved to my website.

and I want to take those letters, put them in boxes, and send them to the APA so they can see how many people truly want that change.

bill kubota (08:56.694)
Have you getting a lot of exposure, media coverage about this currently?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (09:02.599)
No, definitely not enough.

bill kubota (09:05.319)
Why not?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (09:09.045)
Well, we did. Well, let me tell you what I've had so far. So we had, Frank and I have been in Chicago, CBS News. I was on Fox News Local, but I've been trying to get on other stations. My PR persons tried to pitch it, but nobody's interested. I don't know.

bill kubota (09:28.43)
Well, I saw you had a lot of videos online there. I was kind of surprised, and they're pretty current going on now.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (09:36.761)
I'm trying, sir. I think it's very important.

bill kubota (09:39.626)
What about, you know, we're, we're really interested in just doing a story about honor for all. In fact, one of the Kent Hall, he had an interesting story of his life. But then I was talking to Tom Mahaney and I realized this is a lot bigger than just a couple of guys hanging out Williamson, you know, but this is Michigan and it's a local story, but suddenly we're looking at a national story, it may be international.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (10:02.749)
No, no. Yeah, let me, yeah, well, if I may, let me tell you a couple of quick things. So number one, Tom Mahaney is an amazing man. That man has been a very good friend of Frank Hogbert. That's how I met Tom. He would go on hunger strikes to change the names. He got 40 states to change the name PTSD to PTSI in Congress. Not an easy task, you can imagine. And then...

PTSD is an international problem. And before, when Frank was writing about it in 1980, we're looking at six, 7% of people had PTSD then. After COVID and the wars and everything, the numbers, I can't even guess the numbers, at least 40, 50%. The thing that people don't realize, if you don't take this seriously, here's what PTSD does. It...

increases aging speed, you can actually measure that by epigenetic logs. People with PTSD has twice the rate of heart attacks. So if you ignore that, people are going to have more heart attacks, definitely more suicides, no question. They're going to age quicker. It's going to be a global epidemic even more than it is. So if we can at least start talking about it as a biologic, let's start treating it. It is an international story. If any ideas you can help us promote it.

Nationally, internationally, I'm on board. I'm talking to the people who are in contact with Ukrainian Department of Defense. I'm trying to bring stuff we do to help them. But it needs to be embraced as soon as possible.

bill kubota (11:46.126)
Well, changing the DSM, it's been changed for other terms, right? Some of the things that we're familiar with. Talk about that a little.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (11:54.577)
Yeah, that's one of my favorite topics actually. So the first term that was changed, the DSM-1 came out in 1952. So being a homosexual was considered a mental disorder. Interestingly enough, it was not well tolerated and by DSM-2 it was gone, which is, I think it's pretty obvious. I think most people today would say that's crazy talk, but whatever, not to use a parabolic, hyperbolic. But...

What's interesting, between DSM 4 and DSM 5, in 2012, when Pete Cirelli and Frank Uggberg were trying to change the name, a few names were changed. One of them was learning disability. And DSM committee felt that this was probably, rightfully so, that this was stigmatizing. And they changed it to something like alternate learning style and things like that, less stigmatizing.

There was another one about sexual misalignment or misalignment disorder. What's interesting, all the names that was changed, another one is conversion disorder. The main impetus is that all of those terms were stigmatizing. Of all the terms that encompasses is a very small population. PTSD is a huge population.

clearly stigmatizing and it was still ignored. So the reason I'm somewhat of a scientist, I write a number of medical papers and things like that. And the reason that I have tried to do, I've done the science stuff, but I think this is a social level decision. There's no scientific reason that anybody could say, or that there's no objective findings at all for PTSD. That's just not true.

There's a whole industry of functional MRI, brain scans, DNA analysis. There's biological changes. There's no debate of that, but they still talking about, oh, no, we don't want to change the name for reason X, reason Y. I don't understand those reasons. Nobody be able to explain it to me.

bill kubota (14:12.286)
Maybe it costs a lot to reprint it. Maybe people have to relearn that term, but explain again how this could be stigmatizing with the word disorder versus injury.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (14:26.161)
Yeah, so that's a fair question. So, I'm sorry about that. Let me turn this off. All this technology. So the reason, let's start with the general, right? General's not a scientist, he's not a psychiatrist. He is a four-star general. Currently he's retired, but he was then in charge of his guys, right? And a lot of, unfortunately, during Iraq War, many, many people committed suicide.

So he went to the essence, like, what can we do to help you? And they said, if you say, I have a disorder, it means, number one, I can snap out of it. So it's all in my head. It's a psychiatric, but it's not all in your head. It's a physiologic change. If we feel there is a real problem, and we don't, if I say, I have PTSD, help me, if it feels like it's the same as having a broken leg, I'm gonna go get treated. If you come...

If I come and tell you I have PTSD, you know, probably remember during World War II, there was a, Gerald Patton had a clear, there was a classic excerpt from what he did. This guy was cowering in a hole because he had PTSD. He came by and called him a coward and slapped him inside the head. That's not an effective treatment for PTSD. But if somebody says, look, you have a problem, let's help you.

People just get embraced instead of being shamed. They're weak. They have weakness of soul or they're scared. And the worst part to me is you can snap out of it. That's not true. You cannot snap out of a broken leg. You can snap. If you take that attitude, right there tomorrow, many less suicides will happen. So what a simple change. And it costs nothing. Reprinting it, okay, so if doctors have to learn a new term.

Oh my God, that's just horrible. To save lives, that's our oath. We're supposed to help, right? Not go out, you know, it's, I don't wanna learn anything new. Doctors are supposed to learn new things every day. This is our function.

bill kubota (16:37.51)
One other thing, explain your treatment. You were able to help a dog with trauma and then, and people too, what is that treatment?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (16:48.837)
Oh, the treatment I came up with, I'm an anesthesiologist. So I'm not really a psychiatrist, right? At all. So I've been doing something called Stelagaglian block. It's an injection in the neck where we can reset and fight and flight system. So what PTSD or PTSI is, is when somebody has trauma, any kind of mammal, it could be a rat, it could be human, it could be dog, doesn't matter. Trauma activates fight and flight system. If that system gets stuck,

that's what PTSD is, or PTSD. This block can reset that to before trauma state in 10, 15 minutes. It also takes away doom, which is really interesting. So let me tell you a story about doom. So a lot of patients with PTSD report feeling of doom, that something bad is going to happen. So, and after the block, a lot of times it goes away. So I was like, okay, that...

Interesting, I don't understand why it would be. So there's a condition called pheochromocytoma. It's a rare tumor of the adrenal. It produces norepinephrine, fight and flight transmitters. Number three symptoms for pheochromocytoma is doom. If you take their gland out, the doom goes away. That tells you it's a biologic change. It's real. There's no craziness around it, right?

bill kubota (18:16.098)
How often are you administering that treatment?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (18:20.165)
Well, keeping my eye around Stella Center, I'm a medical director. We have 40 sites across the nation, four in Australia and one in Israel. Unfortunately, one in Israel is inactive now. Everybody has been deployed, but we do, I think one to 3000 people a quarter. Um, I do anywhere 10 to 20 people. Um, a day.

in Chicago, that's our flagship here. But it seems to work very well. It also works across ages. I did it on my son three times and that helped him a lot. So you can do children.

bill kubota (18:58.918)
Is this, are a lot of people doing, are a lot of people doing this or just you?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (19:04.329)
Well, I have 40 associates. It's done quite a bit for special forces like in Fort Bragg, Tripler Hospital. In fact, Fort Bragg, Tripler Hospital and Lenchheim, Germany hospitals, free hospital system. They published society in a journal American Secret Registration published in 2019 showing that it's effective. Now it's been adopted the military. The first paper came out 2008.

bill kubota (19:06.382)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (19:32.677)
and then at least five to 10 military hospitals have been using it routinely since.

bill kubota (19:38.65)
It isn't moved outside of military uses to other treatments for other people, other trauma victims.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (19:45.985)
In Stella, oh yeah, absolutely, for Stella, yes. In military hospital, by definition, they're the military. But Stella, I think only a quarter of our patients are military, everybody else is civilian. And again, the most common patients with PTSD are abused women. Look at the statistics. One out of three women in the United States have sexual attack in their lifetime. 50% will develop.

PTSD. So you're looking at one out of six, 150 million people. Huge numbers.

bill kubota (20:22.31)
I just want to ask you if you want to say that again, because you say PTSD, I thought that's the word you want to change here. Maybe you want to repeat that again, you know.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (20:28.245)
Sorry about that. Okay. All right. I know. Fair enough. Fair enough. Keep in mind that one out of three women in United States have PTSD. I mean, I'm sorry. One out of three women in United States have sexual trauma based on FBI statistics. Half of those women who had sexual trauma will develop PTSD.

So you're looking at one sixth out of 150 million people have PTSD in United States, just women. 25% to 30% of first responders have PTSD. And it goes on from there. Childhood abuse people, huge numbers, huge numbers.

bill kubota (21:20.626)
Well, people working in that field, consulting, helping those folks that are those traumatized, do they use that term, PTSI, now?

A lot of them, some of them.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (21:33.369)
I'm not sure. No, frankly, I'm not sure. It's interesting. So I've seen PTSD term being used in Canada by military personnel. In fact, they have people coming here first tier operators from Canada. I think Prince Henry started to use the term PTSD. So it's getting there, but it's not getting there quickly enough. So I don't want to show you my graphic here. PTSD not PTSD.

Right? That's a... And this is my podcast, Brain Hope Reality. So we're trying to talk about this as much as we can. We also have a pin and a movement called It's BTSI. We have a song that was released today. It's called It's BTSI. So we're trying the best we can.

bill kubota (22:25.926)
And so being that something's coming up in November, it may change. Is that the thought here? You're on the road to actually changing this thing after 11 years.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (22:37.197)
I think it's gonna happen. I was talking, I had a great conversation with Pete Cirelli and I said, what would you like me, in fact, I have a picture of him wearing my pin on our website, it's ptshi. So I said, what would you like me to put on a website from you? What kind of commentary would you like? He said, it's really simple. It's about time, that's his quote. And he said, if you get that, I'm getting you a 20 ounce of beer and you're gonna enjoy drinking it with.

Because he's been trying to do it since 2012. And he's a four-star. He's a four-star.

bill kubota (23:11.214)
Should I interview him? You think he would do this? Would he talk to me?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (23:14.369)
I've invited them. I don't know. I don't know, sir. He is a busy guy. I have talked to him about it. I can try to connect with him. I'll email you.

bill kubota (23:24.603)
Well, we've got plenty that we've talked to already, but it's just everybody keeps talking about them, which kind of begs the question. Maybe I ought to look into that. What else do I need to ask you about all of this? I think we've covered it good. I want to talk to Dr. Ochberg. I'm going to call him on the phone after we're done here. I got to get him to do an interview by Zoom. I'm familiar with him going way back because...

I used to work in local media up in Lansing back in the 80s, you know. So he was a guy. He was a top guy in, in Michigan, you know.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (23:59.113)
He was. Well, he was the number two man for NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health. But I got to tell you, so I will throw something back at you. If you have any connection in national, international media, I think this deserves international attention.

bill kubota (24:16.202)
Well, I'm thinking this could be a story that NewsHour might be interested in. PBS, I know they did a piece on Tom back in 2012. It wasn't about this, but it was about something related to that. Stop loss, I think it was at the time. It might have been stop loss, one of the campaigns they had in Washington. But this is the sort of thing. And you don't, you're probably not the guy to answer this, too. Maybe you know, though.

stats regarding suicide and that sort of thing going on right now. You don't know what the numbers are on that regarding that.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (24:54.321)
Actually, I do know more about it, unfortunately, than I need to know. So the stunt that there was a publication, I gave a presentation at American psychiatric station 2015 about suicides and prevention using this procedure, Stelaganglian block. So there was a paper that came out based on review of records in about 2014, that 22 people per day are killing themselves.

A friend of mine has been assessing the numbers in more detail. He told me, and you know, I don't think he published it yet, but it's hotly debated, shall we say it's over 30 per day right now in the military, which numbers I just, it's mind boggling. And keep in mind, the other thing is if you're wondering why I'm so passionate about it, keep in mind, I'm an anesthesiologist, right? That's not totally outside my realm. Normally my mother took her life.

when I was a surgical resident. So I understand suicide, I understand what it does to the people. There's also a term that we use now, secondary PTSD, it should be called secondary PTSD, meaning like my father came back from World War II, severe PTSD, he gave to my mother who led to her suicide. So if I can stop her for other families, I think it's huge.

bill kubota (26:19.766)
Well, it's one of those things that hasn't been talked about.

by most of our lifetimes. I think I had an uncle that committed suicide. It was not talked about. I didn't really know about that until more recently. Just knew he died young. I didn't know why.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (26:36.254)
Right, it was me.

The same thing, right? We talked about shaming, right? Stigma. Is there a stigma of broken leg? Somebody has broken back. Oh my God. Oh, yes. Help me, help me, get me. Everybody's going, oh, so sad, broken leg. It's like, when you have somebody kill in your family. Shh.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (26:58.581)
But that goes on like this in generations. Plus keep in mind, PTSD, once somebody has PTSD, it goes three generations. It gets transmitted genetically, it's rapid genetic change. So that's why it's so important to talk about and treat it because you can save lives for a long life, healthy life and prevent suicide by changing one name, really? Shh.

bill kubota (27:28.706)
Well, you're doing a good job marketing. If you had a bigger budget, you could market more. I would like to use a little bit of your PSA in our segment, too. And do you have any images, like brain scans or anything that I could use to show what you're talking about?

Dr. Eugene Lipov (27:31.411)
I'm trying buddy!

Dr. Eugene Lipov (27:38.44)
Use all of it.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (27:46.997)
The easiest way to do it, the real ones are not as obvious, but if you look at the one the PSA, that's pretty straightforward. Just use those images. There are two images.

bill kubota (27:54.582)
That's what I'll do. I was just thinking if there were any other clinical images that are floating around, because I haven't looked that deep into this, but I'd just be curious, you know.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (28:02.185)
There, you know, in order to understand those, you have to be a true egghead. And those are really complicated because it's not that simple. I can, you know what I'll send you though, is I will send you an article that was published in American ASA, American Society of Ancestry. They did PET scans, which is advanced scanner on PTSD. They did the block and they followed up and they saw deactivation of amygdala saying that it got better. I'll send you that.

bill kubota (28:08.287)
Yeah, I know.

bill kubota (28:30.874)
Okay. I think we're good. Dr. Lippoff, you did great. I like your studio. I like the fact that you can record it for me. Uh, we talked about doing the Riverside and I did a couple of them back then because we could do it, but the trouble was most of our interviewees. Well, I was having trouble getting it open to use my phone, but yeah, they have people have Chrome and all like that. And that this was like.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (28:40.114)
Anytime, my friend.

bill kubota (28:56.794)
during COVID, we went to all of this sort of thing. And it's changed the way we do TV now, using Zoom. And some of my cohorts were doing Riverside. I think they're back to shooting everything in the field now. I'd rather do more Riverside, but it requires people that are a little bit more camera savvy, including me now, obviously. But I don't know why my Google Chrome was not updating. I downloaded it. I installed it twice. It still didn't work. So.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (29:25.057)
No, no, no. So I'll send you, I will send you this, once it's processed, I will send it to you. Feel free to cut anything, do anything you want with that. If you know people in big, you know, big press, small press, you know, this is the focus of my life.

bill kubota (29:40.498)
Well, I, it just struck me. This could be a national news hour story or they should get on it. They probably won't take what we do, but this is going to run the second week in November, it's the veterans day story that we're going to do. So that's, that's how we got onto it. And like I said, we were more curious about this interesting life of Kent Hall. And then, well, it's a bigger, stronger angle than just the guy you robbed banks.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (30:03.018)
Right?

bill kubota (30:11.639)
We got a highly promotable story here. So there you have it.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (30:16.309)
Whatever you think, hope it is relatable too.

bill kubota (30:19.082)
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for talking. I'll stop so you have less time on your recording here.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (30:23.521)
Thank you. I will send you information.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (30:28.745)
I'll send it to you, sir. Have a good day. Thank you.

bill kubota (30:30.014)
Alright, thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.