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

Dr. Eugene Lipov (00:01.506)
Welcome to yet another amazing podcast. This is, I believe, podcast number six. I have an amazing guest today with us. This young lady is a filmmaker and she's doing a documentary. She's interested in PTSD or PTSD. Hopefully we'll be using that name a little differently. And then I think we'll have some fascinating discussions and you have to see some patients today. Correct.

Maybe you can tell us who you are and why you're hanging out in beautiful Westmont, Illinois. Well known for the Stella Center. That's what is well known now, or it should be. My name is Gia Gallaghani. I am a filmmaker. I am doing a documentary right now with the doctor and my best friends that are actually getting treated here.

They were in desperate need of some relief from PTSD, both of them. They're both, they're married. And we stumble upon this and this is just something that I don't even know how it all came about, but sometimes I don't question gifts like this. And in a very short amount of time, in three weeks, we're here. And it was fascinating to see your work today.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (01:27.378)
It is interesting though. So if you don't mind, let me tell you about the documentary. I mean, that documentary, this podcast. So I call it brain hope reality. And we'll talk about why, but the name PTSD should be changed to PTSD, post-traumatic stress injury, because I truly believe in there's a lot of really good science evidence behind it, that it's an injury, it's a real biological change and it can be treated biologically. So to me, PTSD is not a lifestyle. It's actually.

organic problem that's fixable. So we can talk about the brain, a huge part about mental health as hope. We're also going to talk about reality and what really is and what's not so much. And then we're also going to talk about aging and mental health impact on aging, which is measurable nowadays, which is amazing using a heart with a clock called epigenetic clock and what you can do about it. Anyway, welcome. We all need anti-aging, don't we?

Well, the first thing we need is mental health. Of course. That is, yes, I agree. And I am extremely curious this because it just totally makes sense. However, I've never heard anybody like. Well, let's start with that. This is a good place to start. Yeah. So let me tell you a story about the term PTSD. So that terms introduced in 1980, PSM3, which is a diagnostic statistical manual of psychiatry.

American psychiatric association. So what's interesting is the term PTSD has evolved over time. The first time the term PTSD or like was used in modern era was called soldiers' heart, used in civil war, which was 1800s. Then, right? And then it became shalshak, World War I, early 1900s. Battle fatigue.

1941, something in that area, then became Vietnam syndrome. And now it's called PTSD in the United States. In Russia, the term used to be Chechnya syndrome. Interestingly enough, all those terms mean the same thing. People have the same symptoms. They have a flat face, they're anxious, they can't sleep. And what's interesting is PTSD is also seen in animals. It's called VPTSD, veterinary PTSD. So quarter of the animals.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (03:54.002)
or quarter of the military dogs that come back from Iraq have B-PTSD. Oh. So, I actually was the first one in the globe to treat PTSD with stellate. I wrote an article in the paper with me about it. Wow. How is it that people don't know too much about this? What is really stopping this? I'll tell you in a second. Stay tuned. So, here's what happened. So, the man, Frank Ogwer, is actually a very close friend of mine.

very famous psychiatrist, he used to work for FBI and he came up with the term Stockholm syndrome, which you probably heard of. Of course. Yeah. So he was part of the committee designing the term PTSD in 1980s. So since then, he believes they were wrong, the committee was wrong. The name needs to be changed to PTSD. So in fact, there is a previous episode on my podcast, Frank and I talking about it, the whole history, which is an amazing opportunity.

But what he believes is a biological change that is measurable using modern instruments. When people say PTSD is invisible wound, my answer that it's invisible if you have the wrong scanner. If you have the wrong scanners, PET scan, FMR, MEG scan, you can actually see PTSD. I've seen a, I went to Dr. Aiman's office. Right. And I saw that the scans and the areas where he can see like. Right.

Is that what you mean? Like they can see that's one of the techniques. Okay. He and I and his partner wrote a paper together about that. And you can reverse those changes by doing the procedures we were doing. That's exactly right. Yep. That's what you, that, that those are advanced counters. And what can we all do a citizen to be able to help change that name? Happen to have a specific ask. Love that. So anyway, so.

Back to the story. Sorry, I just, I go fast. I go faster. Anyway, so the EPA, American Psychiatric Association, is the keeper of the term PTSD. So every time there is a change of DSM, then there is opportunity to change the name. So just to give you a feel, so DSM-1 came out in 1952.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (06:22.006)
homosexuality was considered a mental disease. It was not well thought of by the public. Wow. And things like that. People said, what are you doing? Shockingly, DSM2 did not have homosexuality as a mental.

Right? So it's, my point is it's flexible. So then DSM four was changing to DSM five in 2013. So Frank Hubbard together with his buddy, Pete Shirelli, four star journal. He's really was a far star journal still is, but now he's retired. His job was to prevent suicides with the military. So Pete, not a scientist. I'd like a real life.

for Sargero, went to the APA and said, my guys are killing themselves and they hate the stigma. Please change the name. So you'd think APA go, of course it makes perfect sense. Nah, they said no. This is 2012. So- Not that long ago. Nah. Anyway, so I have a website, it's called itsptsi.com. So if you wanna read the excerpt from news coverage from that time is available. So-

What I did is since I know Frank well, and I believe in biological component of this condition or injury, I did the survey. 3,000 people, I asked them, if you change the name PTSD to PTSD, will that be an impact? Will you get rid of stigma? Will you seek care? Simple question. They said, yes, there will be a change. So I published that. I presented it at APA.

this year and then nothing happened. So the cool thing now is to change the name, to change any name in DSM, they have a rolling opportunity. Instead of every 12, 14 years, now you can do it anytime. So I submitted the request of the APA three months ago. So they're thinking about it. So it's in front of a steering committee. And what's interesting about that is that

Dr. Eugene Lipov (08:37.974)
I think there are a couple ways to change names. Like homosexuality, the way it was changed is people basically staged revolts. They said that's totally inappropriate. You cannot call us mentally ill. Being homosexual is really none of your business. So what I did is I wrote a specific medical reason why the name used to be changed. So it's interesting, to change the name, there is a couple of requirements. One big one is, if you could demonstrate that current name,

causes harm, we will change the name for you. So being DSM-4 and DSM-5, they change four names. One of them was learning disability. And people felt, psychiatrists felt that learning disability is too stigmatizing because it should be learning differences. There's also a sexual misalignment or misassignment disorder, and they change something else.

And the main reason they've changed things because of stigma. Yeah. Cause when you talk about disability or disorder, it just, it has, it just makes you, yeah, it makes you feel bad. It's like, Ooh, well, disorder also means it's a lifestyle. You can go like that forever. So settle in for the rest of your life. You're going to be, you're going to have this disorder is a permanent. Right. So to me, there's no difference between PTSD.

TSI or broken leg. You can diagnose both and you can treat both successfully. What? We're using biological means instead of saying, yeah, knock it off. So we're replacing just to simplify the D represents disorder, right? And I represents injury. Correct. An injury is something that could heal. Or it can be fixed. It can be diagnosed. And the other part in medicine, if you think about it, if you have a broken leg, you can take an X, right?

a human or dog or a rat. The bones look different but you'd stop it's like it's not like this it's like that so it's a broken leg. You know it's funny that you say this because my friends right that they needed help he is he was in the military for 20 something 20 plus years and my dear friend has been married to him for 20 years since they were really young. He didn't want to come to terms with the fact that he had PTSD.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (11:05.358)
He's like, I don't have that. And neither she. And come to find out when they went through, there was a protocol prior to see if this is appropriate for you, this SOF protocol. At the end of it, they don't, they realized that they had it, but they realized by learning a little bit about some of the signs, I don't wanna speak for you, but just- No, go ahead. I'm curious to see how you present, because this way I figured out how successful I was communicating my-

No, no, because I think that sometimes when somebody just imposes something to you when you're not ready, it doesn't really matter how good and efficient you are. If you don't get people to that place that they could be ready to hear it, when you impose it, even if you're right, you're just going to push it back. Of course. But just the way that kind of it was Doc Springer and then your psych nurse.

those two steps in that protocol that you have was make them both realize. Because at the beginning it was just him. Right. And then, um, she was just like, okay, you need it, you need it, you need it. I don't need it. And then that whole concept of secondary PTS, I, uh, right. That whole understanding of like, oh yes, I do have it. That totally makes sense. But it was, it was, um, she was absorbing and getting educated, so it was registering.

So she was open to it. So now we're here three weeks later. Today is day four. They had three days of ketamine. And today they had the first shot. How are they doing? They're doing great. And- That's amazing. And it's interesting to witness, see, I can probably see it more than people that don't know them, but I'm like, wow, they're just lighter. Cause he's always tense. Right.

So because he's always tense, she's always tense and kind of like, Oh my God, what's going to happen? What's going to happen right now? They're like, whatever. Right. Okay. You know, temperature and it's just staying down. So that is, that is pretty unbelievable. Well, exactly. So, so I get back to my point. So if it's a physiological thing, you can take an X-ray or can dissect out the bone and you go, it's broken. Right? Yep. Amygdala controls PTSD.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (13:32.618)
If you take out the amygdala from a rat, then I'm going to be able to develop PTSD. So it's a physical organ in the part of the brain. You can actually diagnose and try to treat it using relatively simple technology. So, so back to what can be done to make that happen. So I've done the sciency part. So I started a movement. It's PTSD movement. Oh, the pin? The pin. Yeah. I didn't bring my pin, but I got one.

Out of uniform. Anyway, so, uh, but the other thing is what I'm trying to do is if you go to it's ptsi.com, people can click on letter writing campaign. In fact, there's all your connection ideas. I'll supply this information to you as much as you'd like, but would it be great? You go in there and you read it, or you can just click and say, all right, uh, I want the name should be changed because it's ptsi. So.

that all gets saved in the server. What I want to do is print out all those letters and bring boxes to Archimedes C, where APA headquarters is, and just give them the boxes. So they can actually see that there's a push behind this, not just me, science and discussion. Because if they blew off a four-star journal and word famous psychiatrist, I'm just an anesthesiologist. What do I know? I know nothing.

That's right. It needs to be a, it needs to be a citizen's movement. Yes. Okay. We should do a hashtag. Perfect. Whatever you think. I, we started to make some progress on Tik TOK, but whatever you think, I'll introduce those people, whatever you think, but the call to action is, um, cause nothing takes two minutes.

We're saving the stamps. You don't have to send anything. I'll do all of that. We'll transport the letters, but I'm trying to get a bunch of letters. We get, we're trying to get thousands of letters. Thousands would be great. That's what it requires for this to become. If people want to buy this amazing looking pen, let me demonstrate this pen. Yeah. If you can buy this pen process goes to the race PTSD now, which is a non-for-profit just started years ago, which goes to treat people's PTSD.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (15:58.442)
Beautiful gold pen and that's the brain right there. Ta-da! Exactly, exactly. So I thought if you can do that, that would be amazing. That's great. I'm going to push the, I've seen it with my own eyes, right? I've had the luxury to come here and see it, right? Maybe the first day if I had not seen it, this would have been a little bit of a different kind of interview.

after seeing it and feeling it, it's just, it is something that not only is it a term that needs to be changed, but like this actual procedure. Reception. We need to change the perception that it's not a disorder, it's treatable, doable. There's no stigma having a mental illness. And then, you know, the thing that you gave, if I may, let me walk through what you talked about. So the man...

your friend was involved in serious physical and mental things being special forces men. But what happens is the women go, I've never been to work. How could I possibly have PTSD or PTSD? That's as very simple. You can think of PTSD or PTSD as an infective agent. Think of STD, sexual transmitted disease. If a man comes home and it's always scary and you can't tell if you're

You never have peace and quiet. And that's what develops secondary PTSD. So my mother had that and she died from that by her own hand. My father had PTSD from World War II. So he gave it to her and he gave it to me. Fortunately, I got treated and I'm doing well, thankfully. Um, but I think it's important to realize that you don't have to be in a horrible battle to develop PTSD, PTSD.

being neglected, being injured, whatever, all that. It depends how sensitive your brain is. It depends how long the injury, how intense it is for you. And I've treated a dog with PTSD successfully. So it just shows you can also treat rats with PTSD. There was an article from South Korea about that, using Stelagangdemlock, which is a sympathetic block. So to me, basically PTSD or PTSI is sympathetic system, which is fight or flight system.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (18:24.162)
turns on during trauma, if it gets kicked on and gets stuck like that, that's what PTSD and PTSI is. And you can reverse it by doing the block. So the other thing that's interesting is your friend is part of a study I've started. What we're trying to do is there is a way to measure how fast biological age occurs in a person. It's called epigenetic block. The best one...

is called, um, just give me a second. Anyway, so what it is, we're looking at the DNA change. It's called GrimH, it's actually the one we're using. It was developed in UCLA, and what happens is you can actually measure and see how fast people age. What that means is based on this clock, it has a high predictive capability when people are going to die. Right? So that's a very meaningful thing to use.

When I checked mine, I was two years younger than my chronological age. I want to do that. Yeah. Check that. Anyway, well, you're a young lady. I'm getting older, but what's interesting is PTSD or PTSD has been shown to speed up the biological clock. We know that people with PTSD die of heart attacks twice as fast as people who's out of.

See, that is key. Not interesting. And it turns out if you can reverse PTSD.

then you can reverse biological clock. That's my hypothesis. It is, there was one paper that shows that using other methodology, they could reverse PTSD or stop it and they could reverse aging and measure. Isn't that cool? That is insane. Okay, we are ready. Let's do like five minutes, we'll close out. Perfect. Anyway, yeah, we have to go interview. Interesting. But that's kind of...

Dr. Eugene Lipov (20:23.158)
But basic thing. So now I understand why you were interested in this, because your friends were suffering. You were trying to get help for them. Correct. And now, I mean, the last thought that I would like to leave in here is that, as a storyteller, you always find, like, what is that next thing that you want to do, right? Because you have to dive in so deeply into something, right, for a while. And I just definitely was looking for something.

that I don't cure anything, right, as a storyteller, but I would love to help people that do such work and just kind of elevate it and get it out there. So- I disagree with that, if I may. Well, but- You may not be a doctor, but think about it. If you have, if your documentary or your voice or people you have access to, Hollywood, whatever can promote the name change. So our rubric is that, or kind of my-

by a lion is that stop the sigma save a life. You can be stopping the sigma and you can actually truly save a life. That's meaningful. And that is meaningful. Cause it's like, it's not. I can't say, yeah. Exactly. And I mean, I'm speechless and I'm rarely speechless. But. I believe that. Ah.

Dr. Eugene Lipov (21:50.882)
I'm going to take that as a compliment. As a compliment. High compliment. We're both talkers. You got to admit. We're both talkers. I'm not saying I'm not a talker. Oh, no, no. We know. Yeah, I know. It takes one to know one. Exactly. No, but it is really, I know that you see this every day, but it was really unbelievable to be, you know, we had cameras and we were shooting all this, but I was just dead on watching them in their face when they got up and just.

they were feeling a little disoriented, but just like lighter. And one of them got very emotional and it's just it really they release and the lightness. So I am. Thank you very much for letting it into your house. Thank you. Right. Thank you. And stay tuned for this documentary. Yes, we are focusing a lot on veterans and first responders and the families. Don't forget the families.

We treat the families. We were trying to do so for special operator force. This, by the way, is one of my proudest challenge coins. So challenge coins are what military people give each other as a sign of respect. I have my own, even though I've never done military. So this was from special forces from Canada. That's why. Oh, yes. Oh, it's pretty. It is beautiful. But what you try to do is treat the families.

SOF method, which is a German came up, it's a basic combination of ketamine and stellate, or DSR, dual sympathetic reset. What it does, it seems to reset the brain and make it grow, but we're trying to treat the family, because if you treat only the guys, and the women are miserable. So it's the last thing I wanna leave you with. So there's a very lovely, very handsome couple just came in with a 40 year old kid, wonderful people. Anyway, they happen to be living in Puerto Rico.

came in. So I treated the husband about six months ago. So the block worked for about four months and came back. So no problem. Come back we do a more advanced procedure called pulse radio frequency. So I was treating his wife. She looks like a model. She looks like totally adjusted, happy, beautiful children, beautiful everything. I said how has, what do you think, what does that effect was? And this one's like smiling. She got a very like serious face. She said the impact

Dr. Eugene Lipov (24:18.634)
was immense because the temperature of the house went down and it was relaxing. Being at home was relaxing. You look at that, that couple with the kid should be on the cover of some glamour magazine. They look unbelievable. But again, the point is it doesn't matter how much money you have, how old you are. So I've treated the 10 year olds up to 80.

The misery of living with mental health, I've lived it. It's a horrible way to go. You're living with a high temperature house. Plus it's killing you. The thing you need to understand is that it is killing you. It's making some faster than others, but it's making you age faster. Causes heart attacks, strokes, all those things. And amazing. People don't think about it. They go, Oh, it's just, it's all in your head. No, no big deal.

But the head is attached to everything else, like the coronaries, the blood vessels. It's the one in charge, really. Exactly. The brain is the one in charge. The one in the gut and whatever. Yeah. But the point is also it's, if you have PTSD, it reduces your immune function. Immune function is what keeps you from developing cancer. Go figure. It's called scavenging. So everybody develops cancer. Yeah. It's all connected. Yep. So mental health is key. I think PTSD.

should be at least addressed. Doesn't mean you can fix all of it, but if you try, if you don't even try, now, if you don't know, that's a big problem, right? But if you know, then you can start to seek care. And if you're interested in more information, plug in my book here, Invisible Machine. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. My pleasure, thank you so much. Thank you, bye.