Recovering From Trauma Using Psychedelic Medicine

Hi everyone and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and today I'm really looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Brad Jacobs. He is board certified in internal medicine and integrative medicine and he is owner of Blue Wave Medicine in Sausalito, California and also is co author of the Anti Inflammation Cookbook as well as now leading in person retreats in Costa Rica on precision medicine and long longevity. And Brad and I especially want to be talking about health, transformation, longevity and recovery from trauma today. So thank you so much for joining me. Dr. Brad I'm so glad you're here.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for.

It's so, it's so amazing. I mean you've been do at this and would you say integrative medicine, how long has that been a part of your practice in your world?

Well, since I was 10 years old actually. I grew up doing martial arts and that Chinese upbringing really brought into me, infused me with a whole different view of how to think about health and healing. Not just the treatment of disease, but the prevention of disease and thriving and flourishing. So honestly since I was a young kid, so I came out of medical school, I went to Stanford for med school. I came out of that ready to do into what is now called integrative medicine. Back then was called alternative medicine. So I've been doing that ever since.

Isn't that something? So you really, it's unique that because we don't often see that with a medical doctor going through medical school and then straight into integrative or functional care. Right from the, right from the start.

Yeah. So I actually went into medical school deciding am I going to go to acupuncture school or am I going to go to medical school? My martial art background in Chinese medicine was very close to me and I decided I wanted to change the healthcare system. So to go into the belly of the beast, go through medical school and see what it was like. So I spent the first half a dozen years after my training running what's called the UCSF Osher center for Integrated Medicine. So I founded that medical practice in that center along with the couple others in 2000, 25 years ago to try and change how we provide conventional medical care and academic medical institutions. So I spent a good decade there before I left to go out on my own.

Amazing. That's when I graduated from Bastyr in the year 2000 in Seattle. So we've kind of like been and then I moved to the New York to the East Coast. So we've been on other coasts working on and observing. It's really been something to observe the shift, hasn't it, the past couple decades of how medicine has shifted. Back then, we weren't sure. We were like, we don't know what's, what's going to happen here. And right about soon after that is when naturopathic medicine was licensed in California. So that also was sort of like this real opening of here's, you know, this whole new perspective on medicine. How has that been for you? Just like navigating over the years, especially as a medical physician, you know, navigating being that, you know, message, that voice of, hey, there's this other possible way to address your health.

You know, so much of health has been focused on treating diseases only at the exclusion of other ways to view things.

And so you look at that and you realize there's so much missing here. And so, you know, I ran. I was a board chair for the Academy for Integrative Health and Medicine, aihm. And we really were behind many of the states when they're trying to get licensure for naturopathic physicians. So we would sign on as an organization to try and get more naturopathic physicians licensed in their states so they could practice how they're trained to practice. So I've been celebrating this all along. Both, you know, Chinese medicine, naturopathic medicine, chiropractic care, and of course, the osteopaths and the range of other practitioners out there. There's so much to offer, and I've always viewed it as an ecosystem. You know, the patient's in the center. They're the hub. They're the hub. And there's spokes on the wheel where we can all provide this integrative care. And functional medicine has been really successful. And as you know, in that world, and functional medicine is well known for a lot of patients, and frankly, it's been patients themselves that have driven this whole movement. It's not come from the top down.

Yeah, that's such an important point. And I hear from so many people who, you know, they're thinking I have to choose either or. You know, like, I need to choose this type of medicine or that type of medicine. And as you know, what you're describing is really what I see too, and what I experience as a practitioner is that it's not an either or. How do we see the benefits or advantages of each different offering of medicine, from Chinese medicine to Ayurvedic medicine to.

Every system of medicine has something to offer. Why should we limit Ourselves.

That's right. And so often we forget to take in different healthcare systems, points of view and how they recognize health and disease. And then patients, their needs, their preferences, what's their risk tolerance to really think about what's the best thing for them at that point. You know, if you take trauma or if you take back pain or if you take a cancer diagnosis, you know, everyone has a different point of view. The patient, the person experiencing it, based on their own life experience. And so for one person, in my view, one person, Chinese medicine may not be as effective for them, whereas another person who actually feels very aligned towards it, it might have a much better outcome. And there was some great work done by David Eisenberg at Harvard, looking just at this, what's patient expectation? And Ted Koepcheck, what's patient expectation? Coming into something changes the result and the likelihood of their outcome. People say, well, it's all in their head. Well, that's not true. We're aligning our physiology with what's meeting us from the external world. And so that's so important.

And when we talk about health transformation, tell us more, like, what is your. As you've seen and work with so many patients over the years, what does that. What does that mean? What is that really? When. If someone's. Because sometimes people will say to me, if I use the word transformation, people are like, do I really need a transformation? You know, so, like, when you say how people are coming to the treatment, right, Are you finding that more people are showing up saying, hey, I think I need a transformation? Or what are you noticing related to that?

Most people don't think they need a transformation. Like, who wants that? That sounds like more than I really want to handle. Yeah, but I think, you know, transform. Transformation is the opportunity to look at things anew, to live a fresh life. It's almost like being reborn, depending how big of a transformation you're looking for. But I feel like people want change, people want healing. People want a release of relief of their suffering. So when you meet them there, in my experience, I really sort of try to meet them. Well, where are you around this? And how deep do you want to go into the swimming pool? Are you on the shallow end or you want to go to the deep end? And I really beckon people. So I tend to start in the shallow end with people and let them start to see what's possible and then go, you know, further in. You know, you have in the. Behind you there. It says, master your stress, reset your health. And I feel like there's so, so much truth to that. If you can really have a relationship with anxiety, with what's going on in your internal world. And that has what I call what many of us call root cause. Right. So the upstream effects of what may be downstream. So you have heart disease. Okay. But if you go upstream from it, how much did your own physiology affect that? How much did your stress raise your blood pressure and change your cortisol and constrict your heart arteries and force encourage you or force you to eat Big Macs? Because that's how you were coping. Because under your stress. Right. That then led to you having heart disease. And that requires the transformation for me, is getting under the hood, like, okay, let's go upstream a little and see what's driving some of these behaviors. And some people are more interested in that than others. You know, some people just want the pill or the herb for that matter, which is just the pill, really.

Yeah.

And they don't really want to look too much inside. So I'm happy to meet them where they're at.

Yeah. It's such a good point. It's such a good point. And we have, you know, that is a. It still can work that way. Right. It's like, even if, as practitioners, we're really interested in looking at how is the whole body interconnected and what's really the root cause of the health issue that's coming up at the same time, some people. That can sound scary. It's like, oh, my gosh, how much change am I going to be able be having to make in such a short period of time? But I do think there's a difference. There's a difference in just like going online or going to the health food store and buying, oh, here's this magic pill that's going to. Maybe it's going to replace my statin, but it's still lowering my cholesterol. Or are we going to say, hey, what's really behind that?

The.

The cholesterol that's showing up on your blood work. Let's really think this through and help your body so that it's not putting cholesterol into your blood vessels. Right. It's that kind of a difference. Or if maybe you have another good example of that of, like, how is it? What does that mean when we're thinking of the root cause and the big picture versus just we're going to fix this thing that's presenting in front of us?

Yeah. I. What I call is the full stack. So I believe in approaching things with the full stack of cards that we have available. So, okay, someone needs, let's say they have cancer and someone needs treatment for their cancer. Well, let's use the traditional means for treatment, assuming they're worth it. In many cases, it all is. You take cervical cancer or breast cancer, there's really good treatment for people for the most part, that far outweighs the risk. Whereas maybe pancreatic or lung cancer, maybe not so much if you don't have the right genotype, but assuming that's worthy, then you do that at the same time doing the other pieces of the puzzle that are more upstream that might be leading to that problem, that result in more glucose variability, that increase insulin levels, that lead to more growth hormones, that lead to more cancer recurrence. Right. That's one line. The other line might be. So that leads to, that's food choices. What am I going to choose to eat? That's going to change my glucose, that's going to change my insulin, that's going to change my growth factor, that's going to lead to recurrence of my cancer. And then the other relates to our stress. Okay, so how am I, how is my sleep? Is it restorative? If it's not, why? And it's usually our minds and so how do we address that? What's going on in that material? So I like the full stack approach and that may then include acupuncture. You know, we know that helps nausea and vomiting and setting a chemotherapy. We also know it helps regulate our energetic system so that we have more energy. We also know it helps us in chemo recover our white blood cell counts more quickly. So there's so much opportunity, I think in the full stack approach. And to your point, it's not an either or have to choose conventional or alternative. I really think it's a beautiful opportunity to bring it all together. And with the right guide, someone like you or the work I do, we can be the quarterback and advocate and now help navigate the, the sort of the course of action for them.

Yeah, it's amazing. I love starting with blood sugar too. Like, it's amazing how sometimes we don't realize that our blood sugar, it might be a little too high or a little too low. Maybe it's not even registering yet as anything on blood work or maybe other practitioners aren't picking up on it. And yet you and I are going to be like, wait a minute. We know that often blood sugar imbalances behind this issue. Let's go look at that. And that might be the this putting your toe in the water, like, ok, see if we can help balance the blood sugar. And like you said, then there's this kind of like ripple effect of where it starts affecting cellular health in a way that we can be preventing cancer simply by helping with blood sugar balance. And I see that with, when I work with women who are at risk for cervical cancer. And it's amazing, like right away you wouldn't think, oh, what's my blood sugar got to do a cervical cancer? And it absolutely. The research shows this too, but I absolutely see it clinically. So it's so powerful. I love this that you're like, hey, let's start. Or even like your, you're talking about how to follow an anti inflammatory diet, right? How do we, what would you say when people, when you're talking to someone about like, because inflammation is such a tricky thing for, for people to kind of get their head around, like what is inflammation? What does that mean to have an anti inflammatory diet? And I think it has this again a potential positive ripple effects on our health. But yeah, how do you talk to people about that?

Yeah, so there's a couple topics there, right? Glucose regulation, inflammation. And just so everyone understands my training, you know, as you said, I'm, I'm trained in internal medicine, so adult medicine and integrative medicine, which means, you know, frankly, using all possible resources, whether they're conventional, alternative and incorporating them into the practice. I trained, you know, two years of training in acupuncture and I'm lifelong student of martial arts and awesome yoga and I practice in blue wave medicine you mentioned is a primary care practice. So it's a concierge medicine primary care practice. So we see all sorts of people from all ranges, pretty all different health issues.

And so a lot of these root cause things that we're talking about right now apply to everybody, you know, me and you included, regardless of what you're presenting with. And I think that's the most fascinating and that's what gives me so much passion is you know, people ask, well what do you specialize in? And I said, I specialize in healing humans. Which is the name of your podcast because we look at it from there's some root causes to all these things that show up as autoimmune conditions or heart disease or cancer. But it, there's a trunk of a tree and as you've been trained and you talk about at that root, that trunk is really a common theme and sore. So inflammation is a big piece to that puzzle.

Yeah.

And if at Inflammation, the way I think about it is it relates to really what's going on in our process as it relates to a calm versus a disruptive system. And it's almost like if you're looking at a river, are there lots of rapids in the river or is it a smooth flowing river? And what causes rapids in a river but changes in elevation, rocks and debris, that's in the river. And so what causes rocks and debris and changes in elevation in the river? Right, so you may have earthquakes, you may have, you know, climate change, that causes rainstorms and slides. And so that's what's happening in our own system. Literally. If we take the external world and look at the internal world and that is influenced by how we eat, how we move, it's the simple stuff, what I call it's common sense but not common practice. So common sense? Yeah, we all know we're supposed to sleep and eat better and not yell at ourself or our friends and we're supposed to move our bodies, but we don't regularly do it. So a big piece of what I try and encourage people to do is to have an accountability partner, you know, to have a friend, a loved one, or hire someone, a pusher, trainer or coach to help hold you accountable so that you can make the common sense common practice. I developed something and people are welcome to get it on my website for free. It's called the six pillars of healthy living. I have a range of different health protocols. So under protocols on my website, the six pillars of healthy living. And it's an assessment that looks at these common sense things that aren't in common practice. And then to focus on one of those, okay, this one isn't so good. It's my relationships or it's my sleep or it's my mental focus. And I found that that really will influence inflammation. So we can look at markers, there's blood markers for inflammation. They're pretty crude, frankly.

Yes.

You know, we look at, you know, CRPC reactive proteins, one of them, and that can be helpful. And I, my, my sort of self talk and when I tell other people to do around inflammation is just to look at the food you're eating, look at sort of the self talk that you have with yourself.

See how much you're moving every day, look at the quality of your relationships and that will influence actually what your inflammation levels are. And sometimes we can find that in blood markers and other times we find it in sort of later stage disease that you're talking about.

Yeah, this is so interesting. I love that you're. First of all, I love your analogies to nature. I always believe. Right. To remind ourselves that we're part of nature and that we can learn from nature about ourselves. So that's beautiful. And that you're, you're mentioning that, you know, because I think we usually think of inflammation from an injury or even the concept that a food could increase our inflammation. But you're even mentioning that something that might be emotionally stressful, like an emotionally stressful relationship or experience in our life could increase inflammation. And I love this because it also helps us because you and I want to talk some more about trauma. So this concept of, like, how can, you know, this mind body connection. Right. How can we. Because to me, I think of mind body completely related, interconnected. There's no separateness. But I think, you know, we've, we've, in our society, they've, they've been thought of as separate things, and we go to separate practitioners, you know, specialists to address them. And yet what you're saying is, hey, what's happening in your life in terms of even your interactions with other humans could influence what's happening on a physical level, even related to blood sugar and inflammation and your health? So let's talk about that. How can, how can something like. And what is trauma? What do we mean by trauma and how that could influence our health?

Yeah. So in my experience, we call little T trauma, big T trauma. All of us have experienced some trauma in our lives, whether we've been publicly humiliated or what felt like we were publicly humiliated amongst our friends when we were eight years old. But we still remember that day, right? That no one else remembers, but we do. Or more aggressive, we've been beaten or we've been raped or been physically abused. And there's very. A lot of versions of it. And, you know, the extreme case is more post traumatic stress disorder, where we have recurring thoughts of that and we have a hard time escaping from that. And often those show up at the ends of our day or at night when we're dreaming. And so that's the more severe form. And then there's less severe forms, like I was just mentioning. And I think one is just to normalize it. We've all experienced some level of it. And if you look at some of the, you know, Eastern sort of the Asian traditions that look at life is suffering, and that sounds pretty morose and sort of depressing, but life is not only suffering, but yes, it is replete with plenty of opportunities of suffering. And the question is just like Pain. There's a physical experience of pain and then there's our reaction to it. And our reaction to it is the trauma know. And there's some beautiful teachers, some of which have passed, like Thich Nhat Hanh who talked about, you know, him seeing his whole village being firebombed and his, his family members and loved ones being raped and horrible trauma. And how did the village, and how did he come to terms with it and actually forgive, believe it or not, forgive the perpetrators for what they've done. And so much of that is about that transmuting that alchemy. How can we transmute that experience? And I feel like that's the opportunity there is. We have our pain and then we have our reaction to our pain. And, and I encourage people to do that work. You know, I've, I've done all this training. I've studied acupuncture and yoga and herbs and went to medical school. And frankly I finally have done, my latest training is around Hakomi, you know we were talking about earlier, which is a form of psychotherapy. It's throughout not really a talk based therapy and it's really a mindfulness oriented, systematic oriented. So body based and mindfulness therapy psychotherapy. Hakomi H A K O M I and what I've come to realize is much of our actions are based on some unconscious patterns that are often related to our trauma. So we have traumatic experiences as we grow up and that then informs for positive and negative, non traumatic and traumatic. Right. Loving experiences, less loving experiences and that unconsciously sort of sits underneath us and that informs our beliefs. You know, we believe that you're kind or not kind by because you remind me of my mother or don't remind me of my mother or my good friend. That then influences not only our beliefs, but our thoughts and our, and our feelings and then our actions and our behaviors which goes back to what we're talking about with glucose and inflammation that really these conscious patterns then affect how we live our life and how we interact with our lover and our partner, you know, and how we interact at work and what food we choose to eat and do we exercise or not and what our relationship is to healthy lifestyles. And so I, I really believe up it's worth each of us so doing some work, reflecting on our lives and noticing what are some of these traumatic experiences and then partnering with ideally a psychotherapist or people that are skilled in this area of trauma to sort of unwind some of those and heal some of those wounds.

Having optimal Cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past two decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress. And I've identified the five stress types, which are the five common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels. The reason why this is so important is because the treatment is different. When cortisol is too high, we use different herbs, nutrients, and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the stress type quiz, which allows you, in under two minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are. So then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients, and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisone adrenaline again and improve your health now and into the future. Just go to stresstypequiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there.

And that's, I think oftentimes I, I just love to emphasize that it is possible to heal, you know, because I think a lot of times what we hear about is, is identifying and some of it is the validation and acknowledgement of what we've been through, which is so important. And at the same time, being able to say, and just because you experience this trauma doesn't mean that it absolutely is going to make you more susceptible to certain health issues. We can intervene and there are like hakomi and other methods to help you heal. And I'd love to talk more about that because I have a feeling this is where your work with longevity comes in. Would you say, like, would you. Do you feel like you observe a physician, that when people go through this process of addressing trauma, healing from trauma, do you perceive that that may influence their longevity?

Oh, God, yes. Yes. It's beautiful to watch. When people are willing to address the trauma and some of their previous life experiences in their life, it's amazing to see the transformation that happens. And all of a sudden people go from white knuckling it, you know, I'm trying to not eat that Big Mac, right? Or I'm, I do my best. I've exercising every day for five days straight, you know, and then all of a sudden it comes with ease. All of a sudden there's less efforting because you just you lose the appetite, you lose the cravings for those things that aren't healthy for us and we know they're not healthy for us. It's like common sense, common practice. We know it's not healthy, but we can't help ourselves because it makes us feel better in the moment. Right. We feel better. We don't have the energy to exercise or it feels better to have that Big Mac or a nice big ice cream. Like it feels good, good. And it's so beautiful through hikomi or psychedelic medicine as well, which we were talking about earlier.

Yeah. All of a sudden people lose the cravings, like they lose the appetite for these things and it's not so hard anymore.

Yeah. And that's the thing is so psychedelics and psychedelic medicine is absolutely, you know, shifting in its perspective in the world and raising awareness for it, which I'm so happy about and I'm so glad for us to talk about that so can understand, you know, what, how it's helping and what's possible. Because of course, for so long we, you know, all these years that you and I have been in practice, we, you know, was like, oh, this is this message of danger, danger, danger, and you know, having these medicines not available. And now where there's more and more research and a trend toward realizing, hey, there's some places where these medicines can really be helpful. So, yeah, I'm curious, curious on your perspective on that. And I know that you offer ketamine therapy in your clinic and, and how, you know, tell us more how that's helping people when you combine the therapy with the, with the ketamine or with the psychedelic substance.

Yeah. Well, let's start with the bad rap that psychedelic medicine has.

So in the 60s, this was all politically motivated. So the government was not happy with the anti war movement amongst the quote, hippies. And they weren't happy with the civil rights movement amongst black Americans. And so what did they do? They consciously orchestrated a political propaganda campaign and that would then marginalize those populations by talking about psychedelics and, and also psychedelics and also that's also crack cocaine at the time, time. So they moved those and made those all schedule one. So from the dea. Right. So what's schedule one means there's no medical purpose for them and they're highly addictive. So we know for a fact there's some great studies by Danielle Nut and Utt that he showed in the British Medical Journal that if you look at the spectrum of medications, both illicit and prescribed medications for harm, societal harm and individual Harm. What's on the far, what's the worst one of all of alcohol, which is completely legal. Right.

It's like. So this is not even making sense now. It's like, wait a minute, the most poisonous substance is available?

Yeah, Widely available, widely used, socially acceptable, completely legal. And what's on the far end of the other side of the spectrum? Lsd, Psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms. Those are on the far end. So while one side of it is in the in the hundreds, the other one's at 2 and a 3 in harm societal, on individual harm. And then in the middle are prescription drugs. We have a lot of benzodiazepines. So. Right. Ativan or Lorazepam, Xana, Xanax, these things that are widely prescribed. And so we know we have an mdma by the way, is on the, on the far end, on the safe side as well. So that's, that's the truth. They shut down all research in the, in the 50s and 60s, which was showing a lot of promise. And now fast forward 50 years later and about a decade ago, we've finally been able to get more research on marijuana, on lsd, a little bit mostly on psilocybin and mdma. And it turns out that for example, mdma, known as ecstasy, but MDMA has been shown to be two to three times more effective than any other treatment out there for ptsd. Two to three times more effective.

So it just gives me goosebumps and to think like here we are with so many people diagnosed with ptsd, anxiety, depression, and they don't have access to this, to mdma, they, we only have access to substances that have higher rate of dependency and, and withdrawal symptoms if a person decides to stop.

Yeah, that's right. And antidepressants and long term psychotherapy have shown to be 30% effective. So you're on second. You know, antidepressants, which, what does it do? Reduces your libido, your sex drive, makes many women, so they can't have an organization. Right. Many women gain weight, and men for that matter. And how effective are they? Depending on the studies, they're as effective as placebo. Now admittedly for some people they actually are quite effective. And I think it depends on your pharmakinetics. But for, if you look at a population level, not so effective. And folks with PTSD are literally actively committing suicide or trying to. And so you have people literally dying when you have a really effective available therapy. And for that reason you mentioned, in my practice, I do offer ketamine assisted psychotherapy, because that is a legal form of a psychedelic. It's actually an anesthetic, but at low doses it's a psychedelic that provides, we know it's approved by the FDA for treatment resistant depression. And it's used for folks if they admitted into the hospital and are actively suicidal. If they're admitted in the hospital and actively suicidal, they will then give the administer. Ketamine has excellent short term benefits, benefit in antidepressant fashion. And I have found that this opens that box that we've been talking about. It opens the box for people to look at their emotional content, their trauma that was so frightening for them and so disturbing without the emotional reactivity. And it's been shown with MDMA by way of example, that's exactly what happens. It separates the prefrontal cortex from the limbic system, the amygdala, which is the emotional part of our brain. It separates them. So we can look at this emotion, highly triggering emotional material, being raped or being beaten or whatever, being shamed, without the emotional reactivity to it. So we look at the pain without the suffering. Right. We can separate that suffering from the pain itself and it allows us then to sort of re imagine the reality of our past and to reimagine our future and what's possible. And it's beautiful to witness. You know, there are ways to do it without psychedelic medicine. And that's why I'm so interested in homie. But it's been a beautiful path and see so many people liberated from their, from their trauma has been just a beautiful thing.

Yeah. So it's so rewarding to observe, isn't it, when people can really find themselves again, forgive themselves, forgive what happened to them and be able to like start anew. And that's when we, this word transformation really seems fitting. Right. Where you can really be like, hey, I can face my day in a different way, different way now because I'm. These subconscious.

Beliefs and, and the effects of trauma are not, are not blocking me or sabotaging me from what I, what my purpose is or my passion, what I really want to do is so beautiful. And so you're saying you're seeing because mdma, you mentioned it on, and hopefully it's going to be more available in the near future for clinical use. Right now it's really only available in research studies. Right. But, but you're seeing some of the same using this lower dose ketamine therapy, you know, combined with therapy in your practice, also helping with trauma recovery. So that's awesome.

Yeah. That's right. And, you know, let me just be honest and be fair to the public, which is that there are qualified.

Psychologists that are offering what's considered illegal psychedelic medicine right now, psilocybin, mdma. And they're offering it anyway because of what you just said. We know it helps people. People, and we know it's safe and people need it.

They really need it.

And so that's available. You know, people should look for those good resources. You know, you want people that are ethically sound and that are well trained, but it's available and it's been used, by the way, for. For millennia. Psilocybin and other forms of psychedelics have literally been used for millennia for these sorts of purposes.

Yeah, it's not new. It's not like this is a new thing. This is an old thing that we're hopefully re.

Say we see that they're so effective. And it does, as you mentioned, it's. It's not. These are not substances that have a high addictive quality or, or, you know, so it's not like you're. That's the other real thing. When I, when I hear debates, even with psychiatrists and, and, you know, psychotherapists is like, hey, versus a medication that a person has to take every day, and if they don't, they're going to feel worse. We're talking about something where someone might. Might use it three to six times in a therapy setting and maybe need to repeat it. Tell us more about that. How. What do you find with your patients with ketamine? Do they usually go through a series of treatments and then how does that look in the long term?

All right, this is another great question. You've got Dr. Donnie. So, and I'm pretty. I have a lot of energy around this. There's a lot of ketamine clinics and they're sort of like some other practitioners that they make you keep coming back, right? You need 10sess, you know, oh, you know, you need another 10 sessions. And frankly, a lot of ketamine clinics are that way. And the way they operate is you come in, there's barely anyone in the room, you get your ketamine and you leave and then you come back and just get it again. And it has a good brief, like I was saying, antidepressant effect, and people feel good, but it's not. You're not doing a root cause, as we were talking about, either. You're just getting people out of their gloom and doom temporarily. And it's also used for chronic pain and it's highly effective transiently. So how is it really done? And I've developed something I call, it's a four step method for transformation. And one is preparation, the other one is initiation. So and this is really going into that peak experience. So you need to prepare for it. And then you're in this initiation phase where you have that experience. Then you have number three is you have your insights. And then number four, which is the most critical part is integration. You need to habituate this into your life again or just fall into, falls off. And people don't do step one and four, you know, step two, they have the peak experience, you know, whatever that might be for them. Let's say it's psychedelic medicine in this particular situation. But it could be I went on a one week retreat and, or I went for a month and went backpacking and camping alone, right? Whatever that peak experience is for them, where they enter this flow state they have, they see things they didn't see before. They come out of their, their normative mundane thinking, they move into a higher view and then they get insights. That's step two and three. They now have insight, but then most people just go back to their life again. And so you need to prep for it and you need to integrate it. And those are the critical pieces. And, and most ketamine clinics don't do that. And so when you're looking for someone to provide help you help you want someone that's going to have you prep for it. Have you had your experience, which everyone's willing to do because there's money there for practitioners. I hate to be crude about it, but it's just true. But you need the integration where people, you do the work. The easy part is the journey. You know, you get, you get put in the rocket ship and you get taken out. Now all those beautiful insights, write them down. I tell people to voice record their learning so that they can remember the tone and inflections and how they felt emotionally. And then you can look at those, listen to those years later and then you do the work to integrate it in. So when it comes to your question about how many sessions you need, the clinical trials for MDMA showed remarkable three sessions. That was it over the first six months. So they did three sessions over the first six months and what did they do? They had prep, so they went or two sessions in preparatory. They had the MDMA session which was usually six hours, and then they did weekly integration for three weeks. So that's one month. And then they did it again. For month two, same thing in month three. And then the studies showed that at six months later, or at six months or three months after the last treatment, they had significant benefit. And at 12 months later, later they had the same or if not more benefit, which implied that the new neural pathways that are being laid in down were even getting more ingrained in a positive way. And that neuroplasticity that we were told, we were told we don't get neuroplasticity once you're over age 20, that's false. We all get to thankfully rewire our brains. And so a month, a year later. So to your point, it's three treatments. That's it. On three separate sessions. And a year later, there's 75 to 80% are cured of their PTSD versus the pharmaceutical drug model, which is you're hooked. You're addicted to our medication and you're getting a, you're taking a pill every day that we get to charge for. And so there's a big pushback from pharma. They're not happy about this new model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it, yeah. Because it's. Then people may not need these medications as much. And, and so it's important to keep that in mind. Know I always say to people, keep in mind when you go to a practitioner, what, you know, what is their background, what is their, you know, what is their angle? And, and not just, oh, I'm going to listen to everything they say. We need to. Even with us. Right. We expect that people are going to be asking questions and saying and really deciding for yourself, is this the way that I want to go? And I'm so glad that. Thank you for sharing that and, and sharing that potential for people because I think we.

Right.

We get, you mentioned suffering but before I think we get so used to the uncomfortableness and the pain, emotional and physical pain of our current existence. But we're used to it. So something else feels some even feeling better feels like, how is that even possible? It's hot. It can be hard for us to, to choose that. Right. The, the just based on, you know, just human nature. Right. We get used to the pain of our familiar versus maybe the discomfort that might be involved with choosing something different. And going through the process you're describing, even going through, you know, the, the peak experience is quite amazing. I mean I've, I, I've experienced that myself. But when you, if you haven't, you might be like a little bit of hesitancy. Right. What's that going to be like? And Then going through the therapy and what might come up and what might change about myself and what might change about my relationship. So sometimes that, that fear of the discomfort, even though at the other side of the, of it there can be such an improvement in people's health. So I don't know how do you talk with people about that if they feeling like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm so comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Yeah. I think what I often will tell people is step one, if you're not sure that you need it, ask your, ask your loved ones. You know, talk. Do a360, you know, ask your dear friends. Friends and say like, how do you, how am I do. Do you think I could be into a better place? And do you think I'm sort of stuck in my own cycles right now? And some people, you know, you'll hopefully get some honest feedback and that's a nice way to sort of get some reflection back and, and then that sort of might help one realize, oh, maybe I do need you something. That's the first step. And then the second second is to go slow, you know, to so. And be with someone that you really trust. That will guide you, but know that they won't take you straight to the deep end. Like we were saying in the beginning right. Of our conversation here, let's, let's just do the shallow one for a while and see how that feels. Then we'll teach you how to swim a little bit more and then we'll move to the deep end. And I think that's a beautiful way. You don't need to be put into the rocket ship. Some people want that and most people don't. Ready. And I think, for example, Hakomi or other types of psychotherapy or EMDR is another method people use. You know, it's a nice way to, to start to look at these areas, to look at our unconscious and see what shows up. For a lot of people, for example, with PTSD or major trauma, it's hard to meditate because when they get mindful, all these things start showing up and it's too much. And so there's what I call sitting meditation and moving meditation. And I think yoga and I'm a deep practition of Tai Chi. I think yoga and Tai chi are great ways to do moving meditation where you don't have to sit there and you don't have to sit there and have all these things show up. You can be in your body and moving and using your breath and moving through and that's the shallow end. And I think that's a. All sorts of beautiful things can happen. The shallow end. There's nothing wrong with the shallow end.

Yes. It's so true. I completely agree. I. I did so much work myself with. With the shallow end, so to speak, you know, with meditation and moving meditation. In fact, I love to dance this. To me, dance is a moving meditation, just like for you, martial arts. Right. It's like a moving meditation. And we can get so much into that flow state in the zone you were talking about in those kind of activities or just in nature. So, you know, definitely that help. And I think that those become tools. Then if someone chooses to go to, like, okay, now I want to choose a psychedelic substance or higher dose, then those all become your tools to navigate those. Those other experiences, more peak experiences or intense experiences. Right. We can use those to help us through any moments that we're. We're like, okay, breathe. Come back to, you know, come back to using those initial tools to help us. Music and so on. And a lot of my. But for. For me, I went to. I ended up at some point when I went to, I suppose, what we're calling more the deep end, going to Peru and experiencing ayahuasca and the jungle. Jungle. That's probably, you know, considered more like into the deep end. And I. And I really want to share that. It was. It was huge for me. Now I was to the point of dealing with a health issue. And I think that's what sometimes happens for people. We get to a place where we're dealing with a health issue, where we're confronted. Right. It's like, okay, I'm gonna either need to have surgery or. Or a severe health issue. And now we really get to a point of saying, I need to do this. Something bigger, more different. And for me, that's what really was like, opened my mind to say, okay, yes, I'm willing to go to Peru and take an herbal substance called ayahuasca, because I want to experience healing. And I think you probably see that too, right? Sometimes it's. Once we really hit with, oh, my health is really showing up strongly. And I'm afraid of where this is going now. I need to do something different from.

That's right. That's right. That's beautiful that you had the courage to go there and. And jump into the deep end. And sounds like it was a good experience for you.

Oh, my gosh. So healing. And I. That's why I really believe. I want more. I want people to know more about it. And really to be. I feel, I know that this, there's such an awareness and likely a trend toward more psychedelic medicine being available in the United States, States, let alone around the world. And so I really would love listeners to have this information because I feel like at least if you have the information and to get to talk to you. Thank you, Dr. Brad. To say, here's what you're doing in your practice as a physician and offering people this care. This is, yes, you can find it on the fringes and you can also find it in a medical practice that's saying, hey, this is a, this is a way that humans are healing that you're probably not going to hear about about quite yet in the standard of care. But I think we're gonna be hearing about it more and more. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think we're. It's gonna be something that's more and more available and talked about?

Yeah, I do. Absolutely. It'll take probably another five years. I think the FDA's, although maybe with this new administration, they might shake it up and get some of the people with vested interests out of the fda because the folks that, you know, represent pharma don't like this model. But I do think that we're going to see there's a lot. The research is so promising and I invite people to go online and search the research. You know, MDMA for ptsd, you know, psilocybin with a P, P, S, I, L, O, C, Y, B, I, N, psilocybin for PTSD or for depression, depression or anxiety. And you'll see the, the research is so strong and so thankfully people are doing the work. It's being documented, it's being published now. Now that journal letters are willing to publish it. That before were not willing to publish it, that was another problem. And now there's grants being written and it's being funded. And so now it's just a matter of time. And I think, and the cultural shift is important too, that people are writing ready for it. And you know, the good news about our world right now, our state of the world right now, is that information is accessible. That's the great news. It might be too much information and too many opposing views, but if you actively search, you can find this information. And I encourage people to search it for themselves.

And then you're also offered this opportunity where you're doing retreats in Costa Rica so people can go and experience this. Like, like you were saying before, like getting out of your usual D to day, even Going to another country in a beautiful place to experience this possibility of transformation. Tell us more about that personalized.

Retreats that you're doing.

Yeah, so Dr. Sarah Zahl and myself are hosting a retreat in nasara in July, July 12th through 19th. We're really excited about. We've done it once before a couple of years ago in Big Sur and now we've decided to take it to beautiful Nassar at a retreat center called Blue Spring Spirit. And so that's a one week retreat and it's focused on precision medicine, which is really individualized personalized care focused on health span and longevity. Focused on health span and longevity with the intention of learn about your brain health, learn about your gut health, learn about the emotional elements and, and trauma that relate to our health because we know that close relationship between emotional health and longevity and quality of life. So we're excited to be offering that. They'll also be a psychedelic medicine component afterwards for those that want to stay on. And it's really about providing personalized individualized care. We oversold it and then we were able to get a few some more rooms available. So we have a few more slots available and we plan to offer this in the future for others both here in the United States. We'll offer it in the United States as well as in Costa Rica, which you may know. Nesara is one of the blue states zones, one of the areas where people live long and prosper and so we're delighted to be hosting it there.

I'm noticing the trend here with the word blue. Like you've got the blue wave medicine.com clinic and then you have Blue spirit in the, in the blue zone. So tell like what do you think? What is the meaning of that? What is that for you?

Yeah, that's beautiful. I didn't even notice all the alignment, so. Well, I am an ocean goer. I'm an avid surfer surfer and I grew up swimming in Southern California. So perhaps that I'm, I'm attracted to it consciously and unconsciously. So that blue wave medicine definitely was intentional around my love for the water and the color blue. But you know, you're right. Blue spirit and, and the blue zones was something that didn't even consciously realize.

Yeah, but it makes sense, right? Yeah, you, absolutely, you're going further and blue is such a healing color. It's so amazing. I, it love, love that and I love that you and Sarah are doing these retreats. How powerful, you know, to again to be able to go outside of your usual day to day and have the two of you guiding people to really look into what are the root causes that we need to look at? Is there trauma that we need to look at? How do you know? Because, like, sometimes, yes. I mean, healing is possible in your day to day. Right. We can, we have patients all the time who are in their daily life and I always say to them, my role is to help you recover from stress while you're stressed.

Right.

Like, that's a, like, how do we keep up with the moving train and, and being able to go into a retreat setting, which I know sometimes for people might be like, wow, how am I going to actually take a week out of my life? And yet when you do it, you're like, how can I not take a week out of my life? Right. We, we go on vacation, but we end up more. We need a vacation from our vacation. So, like, this is the situation where you can go on a retreat and actually healing and then do you also help them with integration after that?

We do, yeah. Then we host them for the integration as well. Yeah. So if people are interested, you know, you can go to my website and bradjacobsmd.com and has a list of the retreats there on Sarah's website as well. They host the retreats and maybe if you, if you're interested, you can help, help guide people there.

I'll definitely put a link for sure. I'll put a link down below in the notes for the podcast. Oh my gosh. This has been so wonderful to get to talk with you. Thank you, Dr. Brad, for sharing everything about what you're up to and your perspective on things. I, I know everyone's going to appreciate it so much. So I'll definitely put how you can reach out to Dr. Brad if you'd like to learn more. You, like you said, you help people in person, but you also help people virtually. Right? So people could, might as well reach out and see what their needs are and see how, how you could help.

Absolutely. It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much, Dr. Donnie, for inviting me. I really enjoyed our time together.

Yes, likewise. We'll definitely stay in touch and thanks everyone for listening in. I'm so glad that you're here. Please, if you don't already follow, definitely follow for the next episode of How Humans Heal. I look forward to connecting with you all soon.

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