Biohack your Brain from ED, With Jackie Kilraine

This podcast is for you. The modern man. I'm Dr. Anne Truong, your host. I'm an intimate health medical doctor and best selling author of the book Erectile Dysfunction Fix. I'll do a deep dive into sexual health and performance and how it affects men of all ages and backgrounds. So let's get started and be sure to visit my website@sexualhealthfulmenpodcast.com for more information and resources from the show. See you on the inside. Hello there. Welcome to this episode. I am so excited today. Do you want to know how to biohack your brain to sexual arousal and treat erectile dysfunction? Well, Today I'm with Dr. Jackie Kilrain. She is a chiropractor of 30 years experience, a best selling author and an expert in brain health and and neural biofeedback. And today we're gonna talk about biohacking your brain to put you in a better state for all type of conditions, pain as well as for sexuality. So tell us about how you got into neurobiofeedback.

Okay, great. I started doing biohacking my brain really when I actually heard a podcast, I heard a podcast and I heard someone, I had an anesthesiologist say we had to turn down the volume of the pain in the brain. That's where I said, ah. And I walked into my office that very next day, opened up a periodical and there was an ad for neurofeedback from a doctor that I had known that I'd taken a year long course with. I signed up for it, I started doing it that day. I kind of started a little of the brain work before that. My husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We had two kids in middle school, we had one in college and I had to figure out how to cope with that. I started keeping a gratitude journal only because I felt like I had to find something to be grateful or I just wasn't going to be able to go on. And that really helped me through that. The gratitude really helped me see more of the positive in just the day to day. Helped me to enjoy the moments that we had that we ended up having, having left. Little did I know I didn't know the science of gratitude. I didn't know all the studies behind gratitude. I didn't know how it can reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer and all these things and how it can change the way you look at the world and the way you see things. I just started writing down three things every day that I was grateful for that I was really Grateful for. And I felt that that's where I kind of got started. I started with the neurofeedback after I heard that pocket. I just think that was divine intervention for me. If I hadn't heard, I. I don't even. It was a podcast on fibromyalgia. It's late at night. It's one of those doctor things that you do. You just lay in bed and you're still learning all the time. That stuck with me. And then the next day to come in and see that periodical, I called up the doctor, I said, hey, I gotta have this in my practice. We went and got trained and I brought it back the next weekend, just started doing it. That was 10 years ago. It's been my passion ever since. And it's funny because I didn't know I needed it. But I started doing neurofeedback when my husband had died. I was anxious, very anxious, really depressed. I was going to quit practice. I was going to take, I was going to take my kids out of school. My brother in law said to me, why don't you just work one more year and then just go move out to California where your brother lives. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take my two kids out of middle school, I'm going to leave my son in college. I'm going to move all the way across the country and live by my brother who lives in a monastery. I mean, it didn't even make any sense. But that was how, you know, I was just wanting to run away. I just couldn't even hardly function anymore. And I started doing neurofeedback before. I did it for my chronic pain patients. Not thinking I needed it because I was looking through my little lens of chronic pain thinking, they need this. I don't really need it. They need it, you know, but I needed it more than anybody. And now my entire life, I can see, I can see the lens of my entire life. I see everything differently. Everything that I experience is different. Than what? Than my overthinking brain. Used to talk myself out of everything. And that's just because I'm a doctor and I'm so logical. I think they think, no, it's because, you know, you were fearful and you were anxious and you just didn't enjoy life. Now I just enjoy everything. I do what I want, you know, it's just night and day and thank.

Goodness that you actually learned that pathway. So that way you can show your patient and Others about how to really biohack the brain. And I'm really excited about to find out about it. But let's talk about how did the brain get there in the first place? How did the brain become dysfunctional that it become kind of what you call an over anxious brain?

Yeah. Well, your brain's job is for you to survive. It's for you to get up the next day and live. It doesn't care if you're overthinking and you can't sleep. But it starts off, some people start off with if they were, if their mother was in a traumatic situation or an abusive situation. We have some survival genes so everybody can start at a different level. So you could almost be born into that where your genes are just there for survival. And then your brain never forgets. Your brain remembers everything that happens to it because it has to, it thinks it has to keep all those memories so you can survive. So when you've had a car accident or you've had chronic pain or you've had a death in the family or your mother dies or your spouse dies, or you lose a job or you're under a lot of stress, your brain just has to keep you on this hyper state of alert. So it's always looking out for the threat. And then we're not really running from tigers anymore. We're just not doing that. But we are in traffic and we're all in a hurry. So the brain, it's the same thing to the brain that, that stress but it just kind of keeps turning that volume up. So you know that that's where, that's where and it stays there. You don't really, unless you physically do something that the brain can understand. I'm not, I don't need to keep being like this day in and day out. It's just going to repeat it, repeat it. You're going to wake up the same way until you can.

And so that state is called the sympathetic state, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Is that right? It does. So it's, it's in the sympathetic state which is the fight, fight state was compared to the parasympathetic state which is the eat and eat and breathe is what I call.

Yeah, rest and digest.

The resting state.

Yes, yeah.

Eat and digest and breathe. Because to be able to be in aroused, aroused sexual aroused state you have to have, have to be in parasympathetic state for both men and women as well. And so when you're saying that when brain is over anxious there's an imbalance of the Sympathetic state at a higher than the parasympathetic state. And they keep on going, going, going, going at that day. It doesn't really shut down and the person doesn't really know it. Right?

Yeah, you don't know it. And you may not know why you're not enjoying sex or you may not know why you may have. Have an issue with. You may not really even. Who thinks about. It's. It's my brain. There's like a 30 to 70% people with panic related disorders have some sexual dysfunction. Have you know, ed or have you know, or women who just don't enjoy sex or don't and they think I just don't have an orgasm. Well, you don't have an orgasm because your brain is really overthinking so much and you never get into that relaxed state where a lot of physiological things take place for you to even experience that, you know, so it's just kind of that big vicious cycle that we but we sometimes like we look but.

Unfortunately we don't have like a map, you know, of our brain showing us, you know, this is what's going on and we don't feel the brain waves in our brain telling us that. And I'll get to that part later and how you can do actually quantitative assessment of how the brain is, is working, which is incredible. It's called neurobiofeedback and she's been doing this past decade and is this expert in it. You know, the thing that I wanted to tap is that you know, the brain is where everything starts. It's actually the largest sexual organ and where really the sexual response starts in the brain not, not below the belt. It starts with the senses of, you know, with your eyes, with your vision and the smell, the taste and the sound and then be in that mindset state. And that's where Dr. Kilrain help you with to get your mind in that state of mind. So that way your, your mind can be receptive for it. So knowing that your brain can be over anxious and you may not be knowing that you're over anxious. So what are the things that, that to look out for if you're in an over anxious state? Brain.

Yeah. Typically if you're in an over anxious state in your brain, you're going to overthink everything. You're gonna think you're gonna overthink things so much that you talk yourself out of everything and you think it makes perfect sense. You may be experiencing insomnia. You know, you can lay your head down at night and you can't shut your brain off. It just keeps running through all the things I need to do tomorrow or the things I should have done today. And I used to have to keep my TV on to. So I had something to distract, which is not good for sleep, of course. Something to distract my brain because my brain just kept running and running and running and thinking and evolving. Or I'd wake up. You have lots of people that come in and say, I just wake up and I can't shut it off. Everything keeps running. That's an over anxious brain. So insomnia, migraine, tension headaches, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, lots of those are just everything that kind of turns that volume up. You get hypersensitive, you're always on the lookout for the threat. You know, some people even have to sit in a room where they can see the exits. Or, you know, or you just, you know, you're just jumpy. You might just be really jumpy, you know, like you've almost had. That's, that's an overthinking over, over anxious brain. It's just not settled in. Typically you'll know you're, you know, you don't even really know what you just did. Why'd you go in this room? Well, sometimes you, you know, sometimes that can just be a real memory issue. But most, lots of the time it's, you're not in that moment. You know, you're thinking about what you need to do an hour from now or what you should have said to somebody before. That's that overthinking brain. You know, when you can get somewhere and you don't even know how you got there. I mean, you're in a, you're in a different state, but lots of times you're just in that overthinking brain. So insomnia is a big one, you know, just a lot of negative talk. It's a more negative brain, you know, it's a more seeing the bad in things. That's a lot of an over anxious brain because that's what it's going to do. It's trying to protect you. So you really just see the negative aspect or you, you know, you'll never really feel like. If you feel like you're for me and for lots of people it felt like we were just kind of living for that one day, you know, instead of living in the moment now, you know, you can't see yourself being totally happy and totally in the moment. Now you're really way, you know, you're Thinking way down the road it's going to just magically appear lots of times. That's because we're in that overthinking negative brain and we don't enjoy what we're doing now.

And, but, but it almost sounds kind of like you're in a hypercortisol state. Like almost like a pituitary, a pituitary adrenaline dysfunction axis. You know, I was like a hypercortisol state and then the cortisol low and then, and then adrenal fatigue day. So what you're describing, very, very similar symptoms as well.

Yeah. And that overthinking brain uses a lot of physical energy. So you know, you only have so much ATP or so much energy to run all these processes and your brain already uses the most in your whole body. And when you get that overthinking brain, it kind of doubles it and then you're just exhausted. And I mean you really just running all those thoughts takes a lot of energy. Doesn't leave you a lot of energy for other things. Doesn't leave you energy for going outside and playing with the kids or having sex or doing things that a project that you want to start, you could barely. You're just trying to make it through the day and you don't even realize why you're so tired and you're never getting into a good deep sleep because your brain's always running too. So it keeps you in a lighter state of sleep because it's got to be on alert all the time. So. So, you know, I would say low energy and just not sleeping well and can't shut it off. All those are signs of that overactive. Right. And just not enjoying, you know, even, even intimacy. You just don't really enjoy it because it's physically you're not in the right state to enjoy it, even though you don't know you're not intending to be that way.

Yeah, no, I hear you. I'm glad that you have clarified that. So knowing that you have the over anxious brain or more of a more sympathetic type like brain, what are some of the strategies that someone can do at home to kind of start biohacking the brain?

Yeah, I would say the first thing and the easiest thing to do is start a gratitude journal, actually physically write down things that you're grateful for. Three things. Three things. You know, I always said I put my kids, you know, my kids and my pets, you know, those are, those are just kind of always up there. I don't write them down every day because. But I try to actually find something in that moment, in that day, whether it's my cup of coffee, it's that yellow bird I saw, it's the sun hitting my face. I'm really grateful for that today. It changes how your brain works. It takes you out of that right brain that is more negative and overthinking and anxious and it starts to carve that path down that left brain, frontal brain, that is, that sees the good even in the bad, that sees the cup half full. And then that right negative brain starts to get overgrown and it's a little, it's not the easy path to walk down anymore. The more positive sides, the easy one to walk down. And you can just start that with just some, with just the gratitude. And on a daily basis you start doing that every day. I start waking up feeling better. I start waking up with a little more excitement about getting up and going into work today. And I, and you know, I don't see, I see the good in what's going on in my practice and in my patients and maybe not the bad or I don't look at, you know, it's just a different. It just really physically changes your brain and helps you feel a lot better. And that's simple. And anybody can do that. But there is a process. I feel like connecting the pen to paper actually does a little more imprinting than just thinking it. But you could just think it too. Another thing I'll have people do is sometimes we could be so stuck where we're at and we just think, oh yeah, that just sounds great, but you don't know where I'm at and you don't know how I feel. Just to start imagining your perfect day or imagining what you really want to come for you. If you want to feel, not have chronic pain, if you want to have a great relationship, your brain doesn't know the difference between what you actually are experiencing and what you're vividly imagining. They have studies with that, they have studies where people have done that and they see changes in the brain almost at the same percentage of the people who imagine it and the people who actually do it. So I have all my patients before bed because that helps convert it into long term memory. While you sleep, imagine that before they go to bed. What's their day going to be like tomorrow and what's it going to smell like, what's it going to taste like, what's it going to feel like or whatever scenario that you're trying to create. If it's that beach house, you can hear the ocean. You can feel the salt on your, on your lips. You know, you can see the waves, you can feel the sand in your toes, all of those things. So your brain, you know, just helps to bring it to you. And then you start, you get that reticular activating system, it starts to notice those things. You know, when you get that red car that you think you got the only red car, and then you see everybody's got a red car. They're always out there. Now your brain notices it. Now your brain pays attention to it. So when you start imagining it and you start seeing it as if it's real, your brain starts to, starts to look for it, starts to help you find it. You know, Michael Phelps would imagine the race before he, before he swam ever since he was in high school and he set a world record was his goggles came off and I mean, he felt filled up with water and he really couldn't see. But he'd imagine the race so many times he set a world record. You know, so those are two things.

It's almost like, it's almost like your imagination become reality. It is as well too, you know, and that is so, so powerful that. So what are, what are the strategies? So gratitude, imagination. And so, and then there are some, some things that. There are some devices that you can do use at home too, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You can use. I use a light and sound device that's by Mind Alive and that's a brain entrainment device. So it can entrain your brain to a certain frequency and certain frequenc. A certain state. So if you want to, you know, focus more, you can use the light and sound to focus on a certain frequency to help you focus. So you wear glasses, you listen to the sound and entrained your brain to a certain frequency. It could be focused, it could be calm, it could be sleep. And you could do that. And I use that. So I may not like to sit down and do paperwork, but if I put on my device and I and train my brain to a more focusing brain wave that helps me get that done. If someone's anxious and they need help going to sleep or they need help, you can, you can do that. Those devices for. And there, and there's actually.

What device is this called?

It's that one I use is called Mind Alive. Mind Alive.

Mind Alive.

Mind Alive. Yeah. And there's okay, studies at Georgia Tech and Emory and MIT on Alzheimer's disease. And how about 40 Hertz? Particular frequency breaks up beta amyloid plaques. So it's more than just how you want to feel it physiologically can make a real impact on your health too.

Right, right. And then the next step will be neurobiofeedback then. Right. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure. So neurofeedback is you get what's called get a map of your brain. And the map of the brain is called a qeeg, a quantitative eeg. And that lets us see what areas in your brain are out of sync. And then you can retrain that. So you just train like we said earlier. Your brain never forgets, so it kind of keeps all this hyper state of alert. It may be running at a certain frequency. That's not really healthy for you. So NeuroFeedback, you watch TV and your brain is controlling what you're seeing. And when you're in a dysregulated pattern, let's say that overactive anxious brain pattern, what you're looking at gets dark and you can't hear it. And so your brain's like, you know, I really like that show. I want to watch it. It figures out how to watch it. So what it's doing is it figures out how to watch it is it's retraining your brain and how you respond. You're learning how to watch the show, but really what you're doing is you're learning how to respond more optimally to the environment. So once your brain gets that, it doesn't go back, it stays that way. It goes out. And you can start to live your life like that. You're not in that overthinking, anxious brain if that's how you're dysregulated. There's other dysregulated patterns too. But yeah, neurofeedback is actually learning where the other one, your brain's kind of humming along, and it's great. The neurofeedback part, your brain learns it. When it gets it, it gets. It takes about 30 sessions. People start to notice a difference in how they're living their life and how they feel. Usually around the 4th or the 10th session. All the sessions are 30 minutes in my practice. And we do, you know, we keep track of how we're feeling. I tell them, if you could take an eraser and you could just erase the five things you know out of your life, what would they be? And we'll, you know, they'll pick out the things. Well, I'd like to sleep better. I wish I wasn't anxious or depressed or I'd like To have a better relationship, you know, that kind of deal, you know, and we track that. Okay. It's out of 10 right now. And as we get down, typically when you start seeing the brain learn, you see that graph just go down, they're feeling better and then we can tell when they, when they've learned it and they're good. For me, I never went back. I remember when I started practice and I own my own practice, I remember sitting in my chair and I said to myself, I, I don't have to ever get up and speak in front of anybody ever again because this is my office. Which was so silly, it's so self defeating. But I had a panic attack public speaking one time. So it was not something I wanted to do again. But after neurofeedback, you know, I can speak on stages, I can speak to other doctors. It's just like I don't feel like I'm limiting my life anymore.

Right. It's almost like kind of retraining your brain again to react to the environment. And what you said to me earlier, what was really powerful is that this is permanent. So this is permanent. And that, and you said let the brain do its job. Sometimes, you know, being over anxious, you're kind of like telling the brain what to do, but to kind of let the brain do the job and get out of the way. Right?

Yeah, right.

And the result is permanent.

So it's like what it is, I know, it's amazing, you know, it's permanent unless you have an, you know, sometimes another trauma, you know, but you get to know. So you know, if you have something that's traumatic, the pandemic was traumatic. You know, sometimes maybe I did a few sessions after the pandemic but, or I just understood how I need to process things so, so I'm not, you know, experiencing that, that overthinking brain. But yeah, it's permanent. I've never ever gone back to where I was before I started it and thank goodness. And I'm not afraid to go out and try something new or close my 30 year practice and start a whole new thing. I'm excited. You get excited every day and it's something anyone can do. We have kids that do it, we have adults that do it. Any age can do it. And it's.

How many sessions do they need of the neurobio feedback?

Yeah, we usually do 30. So we started when I first started doing it, we would do 20 sessions and that probably got maybe 70% of the people there. You know, it just depends. But 30. It seems like 30 is almost a sweet side. Some people need a little more, some people need a little less. But when you think about, you only have to do something, you know, 30 times and you know, you permanently change. You don't have to keep taking this medication, you don't have to keep coming in and getting adjusted. You know, it's, it's, it's pretty significant. And not only how you feel, but there's a whole cascade of health things that, that go on too, you know, when your whole body, your brain and your body are just really working well in sync together. So, yeah, 30 sessions long.

Yeah. So something that occurred to me is that perhaps when, when a man finds out that he first started having ed, maybe he can start doing a brain biohacking now in retraining the brain pathway first and then change it. Diet, exercise and sleep. Because when you retrain your brain pathway, you can also decrease the stress response as well. And that's really all, all he needs to do to really get his sexual, his sexual functioning up to par again. Because, you know, now the, now the, the, the, the pathway. If someone has ed, they take an ED medication. And I correlate ED medication as like taking opioids, pain medicine for pain because it, it will take you to a black hole and then you end up with being nowhere and just treat the symptoms and not the root cause. And it actually the medication take away your natural responses to get an erection. So it's the worst thing you can do. In fact, there was a study that just came out US news today that looked at I believe 200,000 men that was on Viagra and they found out that Viagra can contribute to eye problem when taken on a regular basis. I digress, but the point I'm trying to make is that from listening to you talking is that the brain is really central to everything. That's why it's at the top of the head, right? It controls everything down below and it's central command. And if you start here, it may rewire because it has nerve, it has hormones in there, it has neurotransmitters in there, cytokine, everything in there that will rewire things to work again. And like you say, you know, just changing your mindset change your whole perspective. Change changes everything for you. And we know that the gut is connected to the brain, like immunity how, you know, what we eat affect our immunity and our immunity and what we eat affect the blood brain barrier that we know of. So what we eat actually will affect your brain as well. So your concept is just really enlightening in reaffirming that the brain is really the largest sexual organ. And maybe start with that first.

You know, we have couples that come in and you know, like the wife may have come in for her chronic pain and her fibromyalgia, but then they say start having a much better relationship because she's not got that over anxious brain. And then the husband's like, hey, what's going on here? I want in on this too. And, and I've just seen just like when I, when a couple retrains over, it's like they're, it's like they're newlyweds again. It's like they're, you know, they're just starting all over again. They just experience, you know, this is who I remember, get their joy back. So it's, it's exciting. You don't you think you just, you know, it's not the first thing you think of when you're, when you're kind of telescoping into to a particular problem, but when you step back and kind of retrain the brain, you just, you live everything differently, experience better.

Right. So you said something that was powerful. You said that everyone should get neurobio feedback, right? It's almost like going, deciding whether to go to dentist or not, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. It's like who should go? Well, you know, you got a brain, you should go. I mean, if you want the most out of your life and the most out of your brain, you should go get a baseline and go from there. Because there's so many things to do and it's so easy now and with technology, the way technology has come, you know, both the neurofeedback's been around about 60 years, but you hadn't really heard about it. It's kind of been in the universities and the research labs and you know, now uses it just different things but, you know, made it so accessible that yeah, everybody can.

Why? Why is it not mainstream? Why do you think it's not mainstream now?

Now you're gonna make me get cynical. I think it's not mainstream. You know, it's not a drug company, it's not a milk. You just, you're not going to see it advertised. It's just not the thing that's being taught. But it's getting a lot, a lot more. I mean it really is. So, so I think, I think the more results that get, the more people that use it, more people demand it, more people that accept experience that they're going to go out and do it. I have doctors that come to my office and are training their. So it's, you know, everybody wants to get away from, from, from, you know, we're learning. I mean, there's just a lot more out there. I think, of course, your brain accessibility. Yeah. And accessibility is, I think that's another reason it might have been harder before, you know. So now, now I think with technology, it's a lot more accessible for anybody and practical.

Well. And I know that there are some devices that you can use at home and I will put that in the show notes as well on how to access some home devices. And Dr. Kilrain will give us some a little handout on some strategy to do at home. I'll put that in the show notes as well. So how do our listener get a hold of you to learn more about neurobiofeedback?

Yeah, they can check out Amazing Brain Fitness and they can check out Expressing Optima. Those are both my sites and they can, they can check out I have videos on there. They can check us out there and you can get a consultation if they'd like. How to get started with optimizing their brain and their life.

Well, wonderful. And I'll put that in the show note as well. And it's just exciting to know that you can literally change your body responses and heal your body with the brain. It is so true. I had experienced it when I was sick with COVID how I was able to change my mindset to a mindset of gratefulness. And Dr. Kilrain has experienced it as well, as well as thousands of patients that she has worked with. And it can be done that you can heal yourself with your brain along with working with the expert in guiding you there as well. So with that, I thank you for being here with me today and talking about biohacking your brain to better sexual health. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Sexual Health for Men podcast. If you love this episode, then please take a screenshot on your phone and post it on Facebook, Instagram or wherever you post. And be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode and what you'd like to hear in the future that will help me know what's great for you. And I would love to give you the most incredible free gift design to help you improve performance quickly. Go to my website@sexualhealthformenpodcast.com to get the book the Five Common Costly Mistakes Men Make When Facing Ed. I would appreciate it if you subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and just know that you can have sexual vitality for life. I appreciate you. Until next time.