 got something on kind of heavy on the heart right now. So some of you may know this, some of you may not, but I was, I've had multiple head injuries when I was a kid and when I was young, I was a very aggressive athlete and I did a lot of crazy things. So I had this wicked flare-up and I've been missing like almost three weeks, I said a couple of weeks, but it's actually been a little over three weeks. So if you know anybody that's had an injury to the head, can test or, and there's all different difficulties of this, but I share this with them because it was quite interesting. And I know that most people out there actually don't do, let's call it rehab or they don't do therapy for their brains, most people just don't do it. I'm less unfortunate that I was exposed to what to do, especially for my particular injury. And I do a lot of other things that support brain health, which is really important. I have protocols and systems in place, but about three weeks ago, we got my, or about a month and a half ago, we got COVID and then I come out of COVID, I actually felt like mentally felt great. I shaved, yes guys, hey, oh, I forgot to tell you all, I did shave. So if I look different and you're, if you're new to me, I look different. I shaved, I feel way better with shaved and I wasn't liking it. But what happened was we come out of COVID, I actually felt mentally really good during COVID. Physically, I felt sick, but I did a lot of stuff. I was able to be outside, I was just, it's like maybe I had permission to relax and be good and be kind of, what's up Barbara Hickson, how are you? And so it was really interesting, and I'll talk about brain, a little bit of brain injuries a little bit later, but what was really interesting is coming out of COVID, about four or five days later, I started feeling really anxious. I was having a hard time catching my breath and if you get to know my background, I know a lot about brain and a lot about neurotransmitters and emotions and anxiety and like I've studied this extensively and I have a lot of different, I mean, the assets that I use to kind of get my brain under control and under track and I follow very specific protocols. I drink certain products. I do all these things to help my brain out and I just felt more and more sideways and April, my wife knows this and so we were kind of investigating more. I also have an autoimmune condition, so like we didn't know if I was having a flare up. We just didn't know, but I was just like having this hard time. And of course, if you get to meet me and see me on live, I just go, go, go, go, go and nothing's gonna stop, right? But there's always this underlying thing. So I had a call with my doctor. I am very blessed to work with a doctor and he's probably one of the leading doctors in the world of brain and injuries. Also, he specializes in autoimmune stuff, so his name is Dr. Jitthi Drazian. And if you ever Google him, the guy's a stud and very fortunate and blessed that he gets to be my doctor and the resources to work with him. And we get through our session today and I don't see him very often, by the way. We're actually working on a whole other project of my health and I just go, you know, I've been really noticed that I've been really anxious and I've been really just not feeling like me. So keep in mind, this is three weeks later, right? This is three weeks after I started feeling the symptoms and it was, and I feel, I can just figure it out. I met y'all, I'm trying to meditate. People are like, doesn't need to relax more. You need to sleep more. And I'm doing all those things. We're trying to find quiet time. And what was really interesting three weeks later, he goes to me, he goes, how's your sensitivity to light then? And if you don't know this, I started working with him a couple of years ago and I ever since I've been working with him, I don't have to wear sunglasses anymore or rarely ever after wear them. And I used to wear them 24 seven. For 20 years I wore sunglasses even inside my eyes were really sensitive to light. Since I started working with him, I didn't have to. And he goes, how's your sensitivity to light? I go, well, you know, it's not that bad. I go, you know, and then I'm sitting there thinking I'm like, my sunglasses are in my car, right? They're actually in my car. My sunglasses, ever since I've been working with him, my sunglasses, they don't even go in my car. They stay in the house and I rarely ever use them but they're in my car. So that tells me that I started using them without actually being aware that I needed them again. And it was really, yes, Lindell's, I shaved her off. And so then he goes, well, have you had any sound sensitivities? And I'm like, oh yeah, I have. I go, I literally, when my son, he's six and a half, almost seven years old, recently it's like, I'm like, are you always screaming? Like, can you just be quiet? Like you're just talking and he's just, it's like piercing my ears and I'm about ready to, and April's like, Dustin has a headache, Papa has a headache, like, can you be quiet? That's what she's saying to me, but it's not a headache. It's like, I'm like, I wanna just scream. It like pierces my whole core when he gets loud. And I'm like, that's not me, right? Yes, beer is gone, Melanie, the beer is gone. I should have talked about my beard, not my head injury. So long story short, I have an exercise. It's primarily one, there's two main exercises but there's one that I do regularly. And what I realize is I stopped doing it. And so, and it's funny how we do things that we know that are good for us and then for whatever we stop. And most of the time we stop because we actually feel maybe better. And just like, it's like outside out of mind, we're not thinking about it. So this exercise that I have is a really, really simple exercise. It's basically colored dots on YouTube and it's colored dots. And all I have to do is stare at the dots and I focus on the dots for four or five seconds and then I shut my eyes and I try to keep seeing the dot. That's it. And it's about four and a half minutes long. So I started doing it this morning. I had my appointment, I've done it three times now. And it's absurd in only five hours how much different I feel. Like my stress on my neck is way less. I'm way less, I come home after working out and it's like, I'm just not, I'm not getting amped up. And it was really eye-opened to me. So what I'm saying in this is that I know what to do. I shouldn't ever stop doing them. I know that. Like I'm the coach, right? And the reality is, is I just got away from it. It just out of sight out of mind. It's like, I need to program myself. And then what he said to me is like, listen Dustin, he goes, your body's gonna go through stresses but the biggest weakness in your brain is this area that got traumatized pretty bad. 20 years ago. And he goes, if you get overstressed, maybe it was COVID sickness and just stressed my body out. Maybe it was just the time, maybe it was me stopping the exercise. But whatever happened, it triggered and that part of my brain gets overwhelmed. When it gets overwhelmed, it impacts my light sensitivity, it impacts my hearing. And then I start getting anxious and I wanna scream a lot, right? And I'm very aware of this, so I try to control it. But for three weeks, I'm trying to control it. April and I are trying to like keep me in good places. And I'm sitting there thinking like, I've worked on this for 20 years. I know nutrition and health really well. I'm doing everything I can to set my brain up to be in the best place possible. I even know the exercises to do. The other exercise is a proprioception exercise where you shut your eyes. And yet my left side of my body is not, I don't have the same awareness that I do the right. So for me, this is like, if somebody has a stroke, right? They are not as connected to their left side of their body. Well, my brain injury when I had, it disconnects my left side. So like, when I shut my eyes, I think my hand's here, but it's really here. And that leads, when I get older, that leads to a lot of future injuries. So I have to shut my eyes and constantly focus on these different areas of my body so that I can keep that proprioception up. So I keep, and by doing that, I'm triggering the part of my brain that was injured and I'm strengthening it. So it's constant practice, right? I know how to do all these things, but I'm sitting there thinking that they did a study with soccer players and out of 130 players, the 112 of them already had underlying CT, like low impact damage, let's call it, or issues in the brain. Out of 113, 112 had them. So you think about that. And that was just from heading a ball primarily, just heading the ball. Guess what, they're only 12 years old. That's all of these individuals were. So I know a lot of high level athletes. I know a lot of people that have been in car accidents. I know a lot of people that have been injuries or fall or whatever it is. And I'm sitting there thinking like, I know what to do. And I notice like to go through three weeks of this. And I'm still missing it. Cause when you're in it, I can't see on the outside and be objective. Like I'm in it, I'm trying to like, what's wrong? What's not right? Something's right. And I'm telling April this, I go, something's off. So I'm literally, I actually, we just today, we wrote down the, I have four main things in my life and my health that are really big factors. I was dealt with some really good genetics. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm genetically, I got some stuff, right? That's okay. It's just the way I am. But there's four main factors that I have going on that could be any one of the time could be a major trigger for me. And so I have, I'm literally have her write them down. So when she sees me kind of out of sorts a little bit, she can literally go, is it one of these four? Do the, do this, do this, do this, do this. Because when I got in it, I couldn't see out to the other side. I couldn't see, I couldn't see that exercise that I've been doing for two and a half years that's been helping me not have to wear sunglasses. That didn't even come to my mind to do. I had to have an appointment. I just happened to have an appointment with my doctor and it was today. I just happened to have that appointment and I just happened to bring up that question, which I didn't think he would, I didn't, I thought it was more of an emotional thing. I thought it was more of a Mitch thing. Like I got to sit down and meditate. I need to go to a counselor. I already see a counselor, right? I thought it was that. And he's like, just go do more of your exercises because he didn't even know I stopped doing them. And I'm like, oh my God, I stopped doing them. Like, what was I even thinking? So my whole point of saying and rambling about this is that number one, I'm like everybody else, I'm human and I make big mistakes. I know what to do and I don't always do it. So you right now maybe know what you need to do in your health journey. You're just not doing it. Give yourself a break, but then go do it when you've been woken to what you need to do. And don't stop because you feel good. Keep going because you feel good. Then that's actually a pretty good quote. Don't stop because you feel good. Keep going because you feel good. That makes sense. And then if you're working with somebody, you know somebody that has an injury to their skull or to their mullin, be really patient with them because what I can tell you is right now is that like I have a lot of control over what I think and do. I'm very aware of it. I'm very disciplined. I work on myself constantly. And I'm most of the people that I know that have challenged with a situation like me. I played a lot of football as a Marine and that's not where my worst head injury come from. My worst head injury came from sledding down a hill on a sled. That's where the worst one came. Now it was number like 12 or number 11 of my major injuries to my head, but that was the big one. That was the big one was sledding down a hill. I wasn't playing football. I had been knocked unconscious a lot, but the big one came doing something just simple and fun. And it could be you riding with your kids and tipping over on a bike and just getting hit the wrong way. But that was the big one. So if you know something that has that challenge, just be patient with them because what I can tell you when Dr. Ducrosian told me, he's like, listen to us and he goes, we rehab our whole body all the time when you get injured. Lynn's on here and she had to do rehab when she had her hips done. But we have a brain injury and there isn't a rehab. You go home. And but that area of the brain gets weakened. It gets atrophied. It lacks information. It's struggling. And if you overwhelm that area that's struggling, it causes a lot of emotional outbursts. When I was sitting in his office, he did a few things. I mean, and they were simple things, like blow air in this ear. And I'm literally like drooling on the seat. I couldn't even keep myself sitting upright. All I do is blew air into my ear and he's triggering certain parts of my brain. He took a red sheet, like a red and white wears wall-dose sheet kind of thing and he moved it across my eyes. And I fricking lost it. I wanted to smash him in the face. Like I literally got raging angry. And he calming me down. And what he was doing, he was triggering certain parts of my brain. He was testing, because I have a lot of sensory, emotional, like motion. Like I get, and motion messes me up and I get really, and I get down, I get depressed, I get sad and then I get angry. And these are the emotions I go through when this area gets overwhelmed and gets triggered. He goes, we want to do strength in the area so it can handle those things. But also know that 20 years without strength in it, it's going to take time or we may never get it fully back, but at least you have tools to help keep it from falling way back so they can get overwhelmed by these things. It was crazy that I got put in a room and they had to do these eye tests with me in a dark room and flashlights. And I mean, I was wrecked for the whole day. Like it literally just, it was, it whacked my brain out. And so then I had to go back and try to get everything calmed back down. So if you're ever working with somebody that's going through all those things, just know that it's more, I spent a lot of time, I'm just saying that again, I spent a lot of time in this meditating state and mindset and working on motions and all these things. And when there's an injury, there's an injury and not that you should stop working on those things but just keep in mind that sometimes it affects an area that you almost can't control. It's a primitive thing that goes on. And so just know that there are doctors out there that do work in that area, so find one. By one piece of tip though, there's a lot of brain doctors out there now and be careful with somebody that's had a brain injury is that more isn't better. The exercise he has me do are very basic. He goes, if you can't master this, all the other stuff will probably stress you out. It's probably gonna make you feel worse because I wanted to go do everything because that's my personality. I wanted to go, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, what about this stuff? What about these scans? What about all this imaging to the brain and everything else? I'm like, I wanna go to the end. I wanna make it as strong as possible. He goes, you gotta get the foundation set. And he goes, he goes, you gotta a few years. You need to really master these. And once you do that, then those other things can be a positive. Otherwise, most likely you're gonna strengthen the strong purse, you're gonna keep the week part week. You're gonna stress that area out and it's probably not gonna ultimately get you to where you wanna be. So I thought it was really valuable advice because sometimes it's, we can get excited to go to the extremes. But with that said then, I just wanted to share that with you all because it was an emotional day because it's like, I know better, know better. And it was like I got slapped in the face by my doctor. And this is the second time he slapped me. He slapped me in June and he slapped me again today. And by just being wise, by being smart, by being in my medical school and researching brain and how the brain works. I understand the immune system, how the immune system works. And he just was able to share that light with me, that information with me so that I can make that decisions for me. Hopefully that maybe can impact somebody else and help somebody else, maybe if you're a care provider for somebody that's had an injury and you can't. Like, why are you being an asshole? Well, you know what? Honestly, I've been asked a lot of times and I feel like I don't even feel like me. Like I didn't feel like, I'm like, I don't know why. And then I'm trying to justify why so I don't look like an idiot. But the reality was is that things were just are squirrely sometimes. And fortunately my wife and I were open to talking about this so that she can see it and tries to catch it when I can't. And it's nice to have somebody that is doing that. And she has a lot to learn. I mean, cause she didn't know me from before I started fixing a lot of these things. She only knows me than now. She's kind of confused. She didn't see the transformations that I've had to make. And so she's trying to catch up on it. And I'm very fortunate that I can articulate that to her. Which unfortunately a lot of people that have had injuries don't think about it. Maybe they're a badge of honor. You know, I got 19 concussions when I play football like you're tough. Well, unfortunately that might not be a positive thing. And that might be why you're going through some stuff. And so anyway, I gotta go. Appreciate y'all for chiming in and listening in. Yes, just once again, I did shave my beard. And I probably won't grow another one. Maybe April said once a year, once a month. So maybe I'll do that. Probably should have did it for November but she's like, we take Christmas pictures around November. I don't want you with a beard. I'm like, I can't win. I just can't win here. So hopefully that was helpful and stay healthy y'all. Cheers.