How To Take Matters Into Your Own Hands With JJ Virgin

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, what they did was unbelievable. But once they got through that part, they didn't know how to give him a life back. Like they could save his life. But then the next part was really where my heavy lifting started. Bryce walks up and goes, dude, you look really ugly right now, but if anyone can pull through this, you can. And I'm like, I'm looking at Bryce. I'm like, where did this kid come from? He's just, you know, my ex husband and I are just in a state of shock and Bryce is just holding it together.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield and my guest on today's show, JJ Virgin, is one, well, potentially intimidating woman. Seriously, I've had a chance to hang out with her on numerous occasions over the past several years and she's, I think over six feet tall. She's strikingly beautiful, she's fit, she's muscular, she's got sharp, keen wit. And she's one of those women who probably would have been like a queen or like an Amazonian warrior if she were born at some other time in history. But instead she's actually an author, she's a celebrity nutrition and she's a fitness expert. And she's written not one, not two, not three, but count them, I believe four New York Times best selling books such as the Virgin Diet and the Virgin Diet Cookbook and JJ Virgin Sugar Impact Diet and the Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook. But she has this new book and I've read all of her books and I think this new book is perhaps the most life changing and powerful and it's called Miracle Mindset, A Mother, Her Son and Life's Hardest Lessons. And in it she talks about her son Grant and how he was the victim of a brutal hit and run accident. And I'm going to let her fill you in more on the details of that as we talk today. But one of my biggest takeaways from the book was the enormous number of frustrations that JJ had while she was trying to navigate the modern medical system and to keep her son from dying and keep her son from not recovering properly or being seriously harmed by modern medicine. And she had this extreme willingness and stubbornness that she gets into in the book when it came to incorporating all these different aspects of alternative health and natural medicine into a modern medical care setting. And there were some pretty shocking results that ensued that I want to delve into with JJ today. And so if you yourself are listening in, you have a loved one who you want to be fully equipped to deal with a trauma that might land you in the modern medical system or in a hospital or having to deal with what might potentially be close minded physicians and caretakers. This podcast is a must listen for you. You're also going to get a ton of advice on some of the more advanced nutritional concepts that JJ knows how to heal. The we'll talk about energy, medicine and emotions. A little bit physical therapy, possibly a little bit of biohacking. But JJ is a wealth of knowledge. She has been basically to hell and back with the modern medical industry and what she went through with Grant and has an amazing story. So as we talk, you can access the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Miracle that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Miracle and JJ, welcome to the show.

Good to be here. Yeah.

So obviously I've alluded to what happened to your son, to Grant, which, by the way, is my middle name. Did I ever tell you that?

Ah, it's a great name. Strong.

Thank you. Yeah, it was.

Turns out it means warrior, by the way.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, my first name, Benjamin, apparently means son of my right hand. Let your mind go where you want with that. But Grant meaning warrior, I like the meaning of that just a bit better. Tell me the story of what happened with Grant.

So Grant was my challenging kid. You know, I've got two kids and it always blows my mind how you can have two kids and they're polar opposites of each other. I don't know if you've got that same situation.

I have, I have twins and they were born like nine seconds apart and they're complete opposites. Like one's right handed, one's left handed, one's type A, one's type B. Yeah, completely.

That's crazy. So mine are Irish twins. They were born a year apart and this all happened when they were 15 and 16. And my 16 year old grant was one of those kids who, you know, like, was born and just kind of like was hard to soothe, hard to settle he, you know, would wake up in the morning and look at me and go, I don't like you. And I'm like, what? You know, the other Bryce would wake up in the morning, go, mommy, you're so pretty. I can't believe bit I was like, how, how are these two related? And so, you know, he just was one of those kids that like just, he was determined to make life as hard for himself as possible. But we finally, at age 16, he'd settled into school well, he had friends, like everything was going pretty well and he was managing, learning kind of, kind of learning how to manage his, his brain. He has the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I don't really care about diagnosis, but you know, he had a brain that was short attention span, easily frustrated, all that stuff. But he was getting it together. So things are finally looking up. And he goes, leaves the house one night at dusk to go to a friend's house. And while crossing the street, now no one saw this. The only thing my neighbor saw was my son in the street and then a woman getting out of her car, gasping, getting back in her car and driving off. And he pulled up, luckily it was a big street, pulled up to block Grant and called 911. And the paramedics came and he was airlifted to the local hospital. Now he didn't have anything with him, he was a total John Doe. But fortunately my ex husband and my 15 year old drove past this scene, knew my son had been out walking and asked what had happened. And when one of the cops saw my 15 year old, Bryce said, well, a kid was hit and he looked just like him because Bryce and Grant looked like, you know, twins. So we rushed to the hospital and we get there and this, they make us sit out in this waiting room telling us nothing. And then they usher us into a conference room. Now we know he was airlifted. We're now ushered into a conference room. Like, you know, bad, right? You know it's bad, right? And the doctor says, your son is a torn aorta that kills 90% of the people in the scene. And sometime in the next 24 hours, it's an onion skin, right now it's going to rupture unless it's repaired. He goes, but we can't repair it here because we'd have to use a blood thinner. And he's got multiple brain bleeds. He's got all these diffuse axonal injuries, right? And he's in a deep coma, by.

The way, for people who aren't aware the aorta is the Main branch out from the heart. It's like the blood for the entire rest.

No aorta, no nothing. Game end really quickly. That's what killed Princess Diana. You know, when that ruptures, it's like your heart, your, your heart just blew up. So you don't have that, you can't get blood supply anywhere. So it's hanging on literally by an onion skin. They said, but we can't do it here because we, we only know do that surgery here with a blood thinner, his brain would bleed out. Basically. You can have his, you know, as harder as brain, but you can't have both. And, and he said, you know, he'd never survive an airlift to another hospital. Even if he did, he wouldn't survive that surgery. And even if he did, he'd be so brain damaged it wouldn't be worth it. And you know, my 15 year old, and this is why his parents, it's so critical to model badassery, I guess I would say, because my 15 year old's looking at this doctor and you know, we're all sitting there thinking the same thing. Well, he has no chance here, you know, so why wouldn't you take the chance? And my 15 year old goes, so maybe a 0.25% chance he'd make, make it. And doctor says yep, that sounds about right. And he goes, well, we'll take those odds.

Nice.

And yeah. And the doctor I think was like so shocked that people would dare to overrule him because I was like, we're overruling you and doesn't time matter? And he's like, yes. I go, then why are you standing here like we need to get on this. And so the doctor went and got him set up for this airlift to this other hospital. And fortunately we were, you know, a three hour drive and a half hour airlift to the number two trauma center in the country who happened to have a doctor who, this is what he goes around the country and teaches is how to do this specific surgery. So we, I mean we fortunate there. So we drive to the hospital at three in the morning, Grant's airlifted. We literally have no idea if we're going to pick up a body or not. The, you know, we got to see him before he got airlifted. He was in a coma. He was covered with road rash. He had bones sticking through his skin. I remember just looking, going, are those bones? I mean, they were sticking through his skin. He looked like the Incredible Hulk. He was swollen. I mean, you can't, like, I could never unsee this And I remember just thinking it was like I was watching a movie. Because you protect yourself. Like, there's no way this could be real. Right? I'm like, this couldn't be real. Meanwhile, my 15 year old walks up to him. Now he literally covered. There is glass sticking out of his body. I mean, he is covered with stuff and tubes out of his brain. I mean, just a mess. And Bryce walks up and goes, dude, you look really ugly right now, but if anyone can pull through this, you can. And I'm like, I'm looking at Bryce. I'm like, where did this kid come from? Like, he's just, you know, my ex husband and I are just like in a state of shock and Bryce is just holding it together.

Wow.

You know, because I'm doing the woulda. Should have. Oh my gosh, I should have just let him go. He wanted to go to a martial arts class at night. I'm doing the whole mom thing. I should have just let him go.

It's so amazing because I've always thought about what would happen if one of my kids were injured and one of my twins were injured and the other twin had to put up with that or deal with that somehow. And I've always wondered if it'd be some traumatic experience for one of the boys or if they'd be like Bryce and just kind of be there to carry mom and dad through it. Sounds like Bryce was the latter.

Bryce was the adult holding it together in the situation. And you know, hey, we all went through a lot of trauma with this, but Bryce and Grant at this point, which I know we'll talk about, like, you know, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. My son Bryce is now at college. And I think what's one of the challenges now is like he's been through so much in his life, it's very hard to throw him. So the typical things that maybe a high school or college kid gets like upset about prices, like, you know, no one's dying here. Right. That's the new. The new litmus test for. Is this a problem? So yeah, but he was really quite amazing at how well he handled. He also got severe migraines while we were going through this, but he internalized it. But he was amazing. Held us together that night because I kind of was in a dream state that night. And we drove to the hospital again at 3 in the morning. Bryce stayed home. He went to school the next day, crazy enough. And John and I drove to the hospital. We get there and we walk into the hospital harbor ucla, a totally different experience than the one at Desert Hospital. We walk in, and the doctor, who's who headed up the whole thing and recruited five surgical teams at 3 in the morning found a stent that's no longer even available. It was part of a special trial and not supposed to be used in kids either. He goes, I figured I'd ask for forgiveness after the fact. We walk in, he goes, hey. He goes, you the mom? And of course, I look totally shell shocked. He goes, you don't need to worry. I totally got this. I do this all the time. I can fix this. And I know, like, this is what mom wants to hear. I'm like, okay. You know, I literally went upstairs to the waiting room and wrote a blog post for this Discovery TV show I was on. I was like, okay, I'm just going to take my mind off this. He said, he had it, he had it, right? And, you know, I went up there. He came up a couple hours later. He goes, okay, it's fixed. You know, the artist totally repaired. He's totally fine. He goes, now I'm just the plumber. I have no idea about his brain. You'll have to ask the neurosurgeons about that piece. So I was like, okay, great. So we go down to see him and, you know, he is in a deep coma. He's got a ventilator breathing for him. He's, you know, on all this sort of life support, beeps everything else, tube out of his brain, managing the pressure on his brain. And I mean, literally everything is bandaged. He'd had two orthopedic teams working on him at once to put rods in his femurs. Both his femurs were snapped in half. You know, he had 13 fractures. I could hold three fingers. Everything else was bandaged. And I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, this kid always knew, like, I knew I was pregnant with him the morning, you know, the morning after. I have such a big bond with him. And I thought, I cannot show fear because if I show fear, he'll be afraid. So I just said, grant, you know, we've got this. You do not need to worry. You're going to be better than before. Which is was a ridiculous thing, you know, like, but your name means warrior. You're going to be 110%. I just need you to fight. I'm going to get everybody I need to help here. We totally have this. Don't worry. And I just started going like, I was holding his fingers and here they said, he's in a deep coma. He won't respond. And then I said, you know, your brother loves you. And he grabbed my fingers and squeezed them. And then I said another name I knew he wouldn't care about, and he didn't react. And then I said, and your girlfriend loves you so much. And he picked my. His hand up with my hand off the bed. And I went, he's in there. So, yeah, and that's like, you know, you just, you just have to have some littlest bit of hope, right?

Yeah. So you, you began to run into a lot of kind of like, frustrations, though. I mean, so. So the extent of my frustrations with the modern medical system are me after my wife and I, or really my wife slightly more than me, laboring for about 10 hours while attempting a home birth, winding up in the hospital after we really realized my wife would have been one of those little ladies who died, like in the wild, wild west, trying to give birth at home with two twins coming out of her tiny, narrow hips. So we went into the hospital, we did a C section and kind of had to navigate the whole system there, where, for example, I put my foot down and insisted on breastfeeding. And we'd wake up in the middle of the night, and the nurses would have taken both boys out of the room, and they were, you know, in the nurse's chamber, you know, feeding them soy formula and putting them on glucose strips. And I'd take them back into the room, and then I'd wake up later on, they'd be back in there, you know, shoving sugar into their bloodstream via iv. And, you know, so I ran into those issues, but they kind of paled in comparison to the kind of things that you ran into with Grants. What were some of the. What were some of the frustrations that you encountered when navigating the modern medical system?

So let's. So here's the thing, and I think we have to look at it two ways. Grant is only alive today because of the modern medical system. The fact that they could take someone who was basically dead on the street. He died several times. He told us later. I mean, he went to the other side. He had the whole near death experience. The fact that he could get through that. You know, we had one amazing doctor who stayed for 24 hours straight after his shift was over to monitor his kidney function. I mean, he. What they did was unbelievable. But once they got through that part, they didn't know how to give him a life back. Like they could save his Life. But then the next part was really where my heavy lifting started. Like our work really has been over the last five years. You know, it was, the hospital was one piece. But bringing someone out of a severe traumatic brain injury is a massive amount of work, both for them and for their, you know, loved ones. It impacts everybody. And so right from the start, I put an SOS out to my entire community, all my friends. I put it on Facebook, I sent an email out to my list. I go, listen, I don't want your sympathy. Here's what's going on. I need your support. What's new? What's going on? I was fortunate, massively fortunate for a couple things. Number one, Grant, I'm good friends with Dr. Daniel. Amen. Grant was already his patient. We had SPECT scans before the accident ever happened. He was already on high dose fish oil before the accident. This is a very important point.

Yeah. And by the way, for Those listening in, Dr. Daniel Ammon, he's also, he's like a 10 times New York Times best selling author and he's like this amazing psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist who's, I've written about him before on my podcast and reviewed his book. But amazing guy when it comes to neural performance.

Phenomenal. And it was great that we could actually have a way to look at the brain and monitor progress after the fact that. But one of the things, and this is really important, that probably saved his brain, in fact I would bank on it, was the fact that he was on fish oil before the accident. Because fish oil protects your brain. And you know, we all have brains and we don't know when we're going to hit them. And most likely it's like you can sit around a table and go, well, who hasn't hit their head at some point? And if you hit your head, you hurt your brain. And so it is one of the key, most important things to do is to make sure that you are taking fish oil and protecting your brain because you never know when you're going to hit it.

Now, when it comes to fish oil, are you specifically referring to the DHA in fish oil? Is it the anti inflammatory action, the omega 3s?

Really? Both. It's really both. So I do a blend of EPA and dha.

Okay.

Because I think it's critical to have both in there. And by the way, I've seen studies showing, oh, it should be high dha. No, it should actually be. So I was like, you know what, let's just cover our bases and why don't we do what nature did, because she probably knew best. So I do an epadha blend.

Right. Meaning when you say what nature did, that's how you're going to find it in fish and epadha blend. Yeah, Fish. And also phytoplankton as well.

Yes. Most people are not eating a whole lot of phytoplankton.

Hard to get your hands on.

Yeah. Didn't have it for dinner last night, so that luckily he was on it before. It was funny. It was something he started to crave as he came out of the coma. He wanted sushi. Sushi. Sushi. I was bringing them lots of wild salmon. Yeah, it was kind of. It was pretty cool. One of the first words he said as he was coming out of the coma was disgusting to point at the hospital food. Just like you were talking. I had a big sign up there that said, no hospital food, no insurer, no Crystal light. I literally had to put.

You actually had a sign like, like in his room?

Yes. Yes. Wow. I brought his food in and. And they. They thought I was crazy.

Why, Crystal Light?

Why on earth would anyone want to serve a brain? First of all, any human being? Why would you want to give them artificial sweeteners, but you want to give aspartame to a kid with an unstable brain? Because one of the things that happens when you have a brain injury is you have high risk of seizure activity. And as we know, aspartame can trigger seizures. So let's look at one of the worst ideas ever. Give your kid. Give a brain injured person crystal light. I actually, they wanted. It was on the hospital, like, drinks list. They're like, what will he drink? I go, I'm like, water? I don't know. Why not? You know?

Right, right.

Why do you have soda and artificial sweeteners and juice on here? Like, he'll just have water. Thanks. It'll be great. But yes, I had to put that down. I brought his own food in. I did a lot of smoothies. They thought I was pretty crazy for doing all that.

Now, how are you? How are you getting him? High dose fish oil. Was this just like a cat capsule or like my kids, for example, they do it every night now. It's one of the few supplements they do is like a fermented cod liver oil, and they have like, the cinnamon flavor and they do it from a little dropper at night. But how were you doing it for Grant in the hospital?

Well, so what happened first? He was in a coma first. Now, this is when things were the most problematic because we were smack dab in the middle of the pediatric icu. Like he was front and center. And There was always 24, seven people right there. So there was not a lot I could pull off. Right. So the first thing that we did was we started doing some essential oils. I didn't know anything about this. I literally put the SOS out to all my friends and my friends started showing up. And I remember the hospital, they're like, who are you? Like, why are all these doctors showing up here and doing all of this stuff? I had, you know, a girlfriend who does a lot of energy medicine coming in. I had an acupuncturist who was doing acupressure. I had my doctor who works at Cedars Sinai and brain trauma coming in doing essential oils. I had another doc who came in to help me with progesterone stuff. So we just started doing stuff. The first part that I wanted to do was fish oil because there's so much great research about fish oil healing brain injuries. If you read Dr. Michael Lewis's book, When Brains Collide, he was one of the guys who helped me with this, along with Dr. Barry Sears, who. Dr. Barry Sears sent me all of the information that they had used to help that he and, oh, God, Julian Bales had used. And I took it to the staff and I had a friend on the inside who was best friends with the head of the whole healthcare system at ucla and so a doc, and they said, basically, if he'll say okay, then we'll do it. He wouldn't say okay because he was afraid of the increase in bleed times. And I went, but there's no research ever anywhere to show that.

You mean because of, like the blood thinning effect of fish oil?

Yeah, but there's nothing. There's nothing to show it. So what I did was I got them to give them 2 grams, which is basically a Dixie cup of water on a forest fire. You know, it's ridiculous. You're trying to put out the inflammation and help with rebuilding. You need to flood the brain with like 10 to 20 grams. So they were doing 2 grams. He'd been on 5 grams before the surgery, before the accident. The minute he spit out his feeding tube, I started in and Ice was giving him liquid fish oil. And I would watch and I knew when they were going to check his bleed times, and when I knew they were checking his bleed times, I'd hit him with a dose and never did it impact the bleed times. So I was able to take his fish oil up as soon as he spit. He basically spit his own feeding tube out. Because when he came out of the coma, he had this feeding tube wanted in, and he kept pointing at it and couldn't really talk yet. But I told him, listen, we'll get the nurse to take it out on Monday. It's Sunday. We have to wait till the doctors come back in. And he just hacked it up himself. I'm like, or we'll take it out now. Grant, you know, very stubborn kid.

I'm curious, by the way, because everybody listening in, like, they love to get resources and things like that. And with the high dose fish oil, you said 10 to 20 grams. He was doing five before that. So you're using 10 to 20 grams therapeutically. Did you have like, like a specific? Because I know fish oil these days. Some, some fish oil is worse than, you know, not taking fish oil at all when it comes to rancidity or lack of antioxidants or things like that.

Yeah, but I'm, I'm dialed in here. So what happened was I actually had Katie Pharma and marine ingredients and they actually, they have the whole supply chain from like the boats all the way out and very clean source and they just shipped me cases of it into the hospital.

Okay.

So I just wanted to make sure.

We put that out there for people. Don't, don't, don't shove the bargain bin fish oil into your kids if you decide to get them. Put them on high dose fish oil. Keep, keep it refrigerated and get the good, good stuff that's well sourced. So you also did. I thought this was really interesting in terms of the interplay between the limbic system. And I've also, I've been reading up quite a bit on this. There's a, there's a book called, it's kind of an older book by Dr. Jerry Tennant called Healing is Voltage. And towards the end of that book, he gets into specific frequencies that are naturally embedded in many different essential oils. And one of the ones that he gets into is one that you talk about in the book that you use with Grant, and that is lavender. Can you tell me what you found out about lavender and how you use lavender to help him?

So here's where I was very fortunate. I've been teaching courses to doctors for years and years and years. So I put this message out and everybody just starts flowing in. And one of the gals who flowed in is this woman, Ann Meyers, who, she's a doc out at Cedar Sinai in their brain trauma unit. And she Uses essential oils. I knew nothing about this. To me, you use lavender at night to go to sleep, right? You know, I mean, you put it in your bath, you put it on your pillow. That's it. That was the extent of what I knew. She comes in and starts to tell me about a variety of essential oils, what they can all do, and she starts rubbing them on Grant. And fortunately, like, the hospital thought this was silly, and so they could care less, right? So it was one of the first things that we did after a couple days in, and it was one of the first times I started to really see him respond. We put it up by his nose. He started to twitch his nose. He started to flutter his eyelids. And this. He was in a deep coma. I mean, he wasn't really responsive, but he started to wiggle his toes and was like, wow, you know, so lavender, besides the calming effect that we know is really great for healing, I mean, both topical and internal. So that was one of the reasons we were using it.

Yeah, it's one of the more powerful, more powerful essential oils, especially for neural performance. And I know you get into this in the book in a little bit more detail, but you talk about how the actual oil goes up into the nasal passages and triggers the limbic system. And so in terms of actually activating neuronal activity in the brain, very similar people these days will wear these TDCS devices on their heads and things like that. But essential oils can act very similarly through nasal passages. Right now, even as we're talking, I have rosemary. I diffuse rosemary in my office. And that's amazing for neural performance during a workday. But you use lavender, you use fish oil. And another thing that. That you had in the book that kind of was out of the ordinary was this idea of progesterone cream. You actually were rubbing progesterone cream into him. What was the deal with that?

So one of my girlfriends went to Emory, Doc at Emory, and there's a researcher there, Dr. Donald Stein, who was studying brain injuries and trying to understand why women at certain times weren't getting concussing as much as they should have. And what they found was that progesterone can all can be protective and also quickly help reduce inflammation. So we actually were rubbing progesterone cream because it was another thing we could sneak in easily. Right. We started doing that that first weekend, and we did that for six months.

And so when you rub progesterone cream, like, into into a kid like that, it doesn't affect hormones or anything along those lines. Is that a concern or is it pretty safe therapy for tbis?

I was looking at everything as a risk reward ratio. And at that point we were trying to save his life.

Right.

And one of the things that happens with the traumatic brain injury is that for the rest of his life we will have to monitor his hormones. I'm working with a super cool Navy SEAL doc now who was a Navy seal, then he became a doc. And now he helps Navy Seals seals recover from their brain injuries. You probably know him, Doc Parsley.

Yeah, yeah, he's been on the show before, actually. I take his every night. I take his sleep formula, take his sleep supplement.

Yeah. So he is amazing. And I was sitting there going, God, I gotta find someone. Because what I started to see with Grant now is that his hormones went all of a sudden, his thyroid tanked, his testosterone tanked, his estrogen started going up, his insulin started going up. I'm like, crap. And I'd heard early on from some of my endocrinology docs and that, you know, we were going to have to watch him for life, that, you know, this ends up messing up your, your whole HPTA access and, you know, it's just something you have to monitor. And so like his pituitary is off, etc. And I was like, I have no idea what to do with this. I understand what to do with like a, you know, 57 year old Andropausal male, but I don't know what to do with a 20 year old who testosterone's tanking. What do you do? And so that's where I've been working with Doc Parsley on that. But at the time, you know, all the way through this whole thing, I had so many friends helping me and I was going through and going, okay, what's the risk? What's the reward? What's the risk? What's the reward? And you know, so maybe he lowered his testosterone a little bit in for the six months he was taking it in the hospital. Didn't matter, you know.

Yeah, yeah. I had interviewed just recently Dr. Dan Engel, who wrote a new book, it actually doesn't come out until October, called the Concussion Repair Manual. And even in that, he didn't talk much about this idea of progesterone cream. It was in your book that I first came across this idea that you actually cite some research by Dr. Stein in the book that show that when you inject it within 48 hours of a brain injury, you get dramatically lowered rates of brain swelling and better neurological outcomes. This is one of those reasons, I actually have in the glove compartment of both of my cars msm, this sulfur based compound that if you consume it after a head injury, it can drastically reduce swelling and improve outcome. And I actually have it in the cars just in case we're in some kind of a motor vehicle accident, someone gets hurt and gets a head injury. So that we can just start into that right away.

Yeah, well, hit yourself with some big fish oil and add some cbd.

Yeah, it sounds like, like progesterone is. Is falls into that category as well.

I don't know that the research is really clear yet, but I also knew that it wasn't going to hurt. And you know, the big thing that you, when your son is, you know, basically it's, it's every day is like, is he going to make it through today? You, you do whatever you possibly can. It's like, what do you do? You, you have every religion represented and praying for him. You use, you know, it's like someone sent me holy water. We're using that. We have Tibetan scrolls up. I mean, I was like, what are we doing? Everything, you know, everything.

Actually, I wanted to ask you about that. When you say Tibetan scrolls and holy water, you know, I don't want to go too far into, into woo woo land, but at the same time, I'm curious, you know, when it comes to anything from like energy medicine to perhaps some of these more invisible therapies, was there anything that you found really moved the dial when it came to. To things along those lines?

What's so interesting is like, you'll never know what really moved the dial. I can tell you now, if I had to pick three things, what the three things would be now, but at the time, one of my girlfriends, Dr. Suzanne Bennett, who's a chiropractor and an energy medicine doc, she walked into the hospital, second day. I'm like not responding to, you know, my text stream on my phone is blowing up. My voicemail's full. I'm only responding to Facebook. I'm posting on Facebook. That's it. That's all I can handle, you know. But she walks in and she's waiting for us because she knew we weren't in the hospital because she couldn't feel us there. You know, I'm like, okay. And she walked up and she would tell us what was going on with Grant and what we needed to check and what we needed to have the doctors check. And then she would do some stuff and help lower his blood pressure. I'm like, perfect. Thank You. So she would just do check ins like that. And then Dr. Steven Sinatra, the cardiologist sent this and healer guy. Now I never met this guy. He would call me in the mornings. I drive to the hospital around 5:30 in the morning. He would call me and tell me what to expect, what was going on with Grant. I and then I'd keep him on the phone, I'd walk in, whatever. He told me it was crazy, that the nurses would go, yeah, this is what happened during the night, which is what he just told me. He would do some blowing on the phone, some weird stuff. And the next thing I know, Grant's blood pressure was coming down. You know, things would start to normalize this. Honestly Ben, before I would have said that's ridiculous. At this point I was like, hey dude, whatever. You know, this is totally working. I mean between Suzanne who could tell me what was going on and Tommy could tell me what was going on, I'm like, one of the things that happens when you are faced with a situation, a life and death situation is I became very, very open to all possibilities. And again I was going from a pathways science background of like what's the risk and what's the reward? But like what's the risk with energy medicine? What would be the risk of them telling me things that were absolutely then documented by the doctors? When I'd walk in and they tell me, oh, his blood pressure is this. And I'd walk and they go, his blood pressure is this. I'm like huh? And then they go, put the phone over here, I'll lower it. I put it down and they'd lower it. Great. So I can't explain those things. We were using something from sound vibes.

If you look at like Bruce Lipton's book Biology of Belief where he talks a little bit about movement of protons and quantum physics and how electrical energy can in fact be transmitted across distances and change things like protein expression. Which again, I notice some people who are listening in right now sounds completely insane. But at the same time, if you read the book, there is some, some compelling evidence and even some ideas behind the way that physics work and protons work, that you can actually influence change via something as simple as sending energies from afar. And again, I know that I'm diving off the deep end here when it comes to straying away from evidence based medicine, but at the same time I think there is something to be said for that.

Well, it was pretty crazy to see this, to have someone tell me what I was going to walk into Walk into that exact thing with them having described it perfectly, and then have them say, I can do this. And then through the phone do it like, huh. So can't explain that. And then I also had the guys from Sound Vitality came in, and we were using their machine on Grant as well. And truthfully, the doctor's like, hey, we're letting you do these silly little things. I'm like, okay, thanks. You know? You know, it's like, that's great. And then. And as soon as Grant spit out his feeding tube, I had a nutribullet in there, and I was like, game on. Now I can really do my thing.

Yeah. Tell me about those superfood smoothies that.

You were making him.

You say you gave him super powered smoothies when his feeding tube came out. What were you putting into his super powered smoothies?

Well, you know what? I looked at the whole thing. Kind of like when you have a kid and your baby and you're making all these cool things and what can you shove in a smoothie? That's why I love smoothie smoothies. You can hide so much in them. But, I mean, the big things that I knew that I had to do was get the fish oil up. I knew I needed. I made one mistake that was a big mistake in that I gave him vitamin D, but I didn't add the K with it. The liquid I had didn't have K in it. And he'd thrown out so many calcium deposits. Because of 13 fractures, your body just throws out calcium. And without K to direct it where it needed to be, it was going to every place it saw some healing needed. Right. So all those broken bones. But when the doctor went and fixed his torn aorta, it actually went to the site where he went up through the artery, and we got a pseudoaneurysm that nearly killed him. And I don't know if the K would have helped there or not, but, you know, I kind of looked later and went, ugh, you know. You know, to do vitamin D with K, why did you do that?

Which. Which a lot of people still like it. Like, that's one of the first things I look for when someone asks me if a multivitamin is good. Is I look at not only the levels of vitamin D, but whether or not they have vitamin K2, 100 to 200 micrograms of vitamin K. 2. Two warning signs for me on a multi is if vitamin D is there and vitamin K isn't for the reason that you just described. Right. Calcification. And then also Folic acid. Right. There's a whole bunch of folate acid. It's the wrong form. It's not the methyltetrahydrofolate. Those are two signs that your multivitamin probably isn't all it's cracked up to be. But anyway, so you did. In these super powered smoothies, you were doing vitamin D and what else?

So I did probiotics. I mean, obviously one of the big things. He was such a massive infection risk. I mean, he had a tube coming out of his brain. He had a central line, he had a feeding tube. And so I had a lot of gut microbiome repair to do. So we were doing fermented foods and I was throwing in full fat dairy yogurt into there and Kefir's, but we are also throwing in probiotics into it as well. I had that. What the brand is, I think it's biok yogurt.

Yeah. Because one of my little tiny package of yogurt. Package.

Yeah, yeah. Those are what we were using because they gave them. I mean, literally everyone was giving me stuff. I'm like, perfect, Cool. I'll do that. Branched chain amino acids and a really cool amino acid blend that I got from Italy that was designed for sarcopenia. Because he was so cachexic, he was losing like, you know, he was losing so much muscle. He. He was down. He's 6:1 and he was down to 145 pounds. And just, you know, so I was trying to do everything I could to help keep the muscle back on him. So those were the key, critical things. And of course, magnesium. And I was also rubbing magnesium cream on him.

Yeah, like a. Like a transdermal magnesium.

Yes. I mean, we had a lot of challenges with. And great minerals because he was repairing. But, you know, we had a lot of challenges with constipation. They were not paying attention. I went away for a week and he did not go to the bathroom. And I come back, I'm like, I went away for a week. My ex husband was there. He just didn't think about it, I guess. And I come back, I'm like, what the hell? You know? So these were the things that you just. You don't realize you need to monitor these things. And they just. I was like, how could you miss that one, guys? Come on. Five days of that.

You mentioned something a little bit ago that I wanted to not gloss over, and that was, you said if there were three things that you could choose as the top things that you did for his recovery from trauma that it would be those three things. What were those three things?

So fish oil.

Okay.

Cbd. CBD is amazing.

Were you doing CBD then, or was this something you discovered later?

No, we discovered it later because it really wasn't a thing. But, I mean, this is five years ago, and it really didn't. You know, I didn't really figure this one out until about three years ago, maybe four years ago. It was four years ago, but we've been using it regularly since. Because one of the things that happens with a brain injury is. And realize, I think people don't realize that concussions are traumatic brain injuries, that if you hit your head, you don't actually have to go into a coma or, you know, lose consciousness to hurt your brain. So, you know, ringing your bell is a brain injury. Right. And I think we just don't. Because we can't see it, we don't realize the effects of these things. And the effects are. Are cumulative. So this is hugely problematic. But one of the things that happens is your brain gets unstable. And so CBD helps with, obviously, inflammation.

But it helps stabilize. I mentioned that Dr. Kirk Parsley stuff. I use that every night, but I use that and I use CBD every night before bed. And it helps with relaxation, it helps shut down inflammation, hormonal balance. But it's also amazing for injuries. My dog's taking it right now because he has some tumors and a whole bunch of inflammation from those, and it's helping him tremendously relax and kind of brought his personality back. But CBD is pretty amazing stuff.

Yeah. Fantastic. And CBD taken with fish oil, actually, it's going to be better absorbed and better used when you take it with fish oil. And then the biggest game changer, because, again, when you ask the right questions, and I think this is such a key point, is from day one, you know, when I got through that first night, I stood there in the hospital next day and I went, how you're going to be 110%? So my question has been every day since then, how do I get you to be 110%? How do we get you to be 110%? And it's been challenging when 25% of people with traumatic brain injuries become suicidal. And Grant was one of that 25%. It has not been an easy thing. He's thankfully now appears to be totally through that window. And what got him through that window was doing interthecal stem cells. That means stem cells injected straight into his spine. And what we did when he came out of the Hospital. I was fortunate in that one of my friends launched this thing called Stem Cell Revolution. He was always fascinated with stem cells. He was early in the research, and he launched something that's now become a nationwide network of docs doing stem cell therapy. And so when we came out of the hospital, he harvested Grant stem cells and he did an iv and I who knows what, what works then? But back then, you couldn't put them into the spine. And that's what I was really wondering about was like, how. Because I didn't know if they would even cross the blood brain barrier. And plus. Right. He didn't. You know, it's like when you're not, you know, when you're an adult, which basically is as soon as you're not a little baby anymore, your stem cell concentration drops. Dr. So what I started to look at was how do we get those stem cells into a spine? And fortunately, now, as part of a trial, what we're able to do is harvest his stem cells and grow his stem cells and then inject his stem cells. And the first time that we did it was very, very scary. When Grant started to wake up from the coma in the hospital, it was not like what you see in the movies. And I literally thought, I remember the doctor said when he comes out of the coma, it will be ugly. That's what they told me to prepare. Thankfully, I had Dr. Ann Meyer coming every Friday evening to tell me what I should really expect. But I thought that it would be like the movie, you know, that movie while you were sleeping. I thought that he would wake up, look at me, smile at me, and say, I love you, Mom.

Yeah.

Not what happened. He woke up. He looked off into space. He didn't say a word. He looked to the side and started to move an arm. His only thing that wasn't in a cast repetitively back and forth for days. And I thought, oh, my gosh, like, what have we done? And he couldn't make any eye contact. And, I mean, we didn't know at that time if he could hear, if he could see, if he'll ever be able to talk. I was trying to wake up all of his senses. I was doing, you know, touch and taste and smell and everything. I could sound. But we had no idea what, what, where he was at the time with any of that stuff. But he didn't. He came out of a coma over time. And one of the things that happens with people as they're coming through a brain injury is they lose their filter, their internal editor that says hey, you know, don't. Don't say that. Don't hit that person. Right. They just do whatever. It's like having a big, big baby. And in his case, it was like having a big, big, angry baby. And he would get scary. It looked like he was the Incredible Hulk. And so when he got this little. He'd get a little thing between his eyebrows, and we would have to literally inject him with a cocktail of Haldol, Ativan, and Benadryl, which would drop either of us to the floor. We'd be like, curled up in a little fetal position, sucking our thumb and sleeping. And for him, it would just calm him down. And we had to be careful how much we did this, because if we were doing this, then his brain couldn't heal, but we also couldn't have him. You know, we had a 24 hour security guard over at Children's Hospital. He was in a zip up bed, because if he started to go sideways, you know, he's dangerous to himself and everybody else.

Yeah.

And we had to just slowly help him get through this and not be, you know, dangerous. But when we did the stem cells, he'd been through this, and he'd basically gotten through this. And then we did the stem cells, and it happened again. And there was nothing. You know, as we started to do these stem cells, there's no protocol. There's no protocol saying, okay, this is what to expect. There's no protocol to say, okay, you need to do it again. And a month, two months, there's nothing. Right. I mean, he's a lab rat. And I told him, I go, you're gonna be a lab rat here. Right. He's like, all right. But that first 24 hours, we actually had to hospitalize him because we thought he was going to try to kill us or himself.

Wow.

And it was frightening. It was absolutely frightening. And so the next time we did it. But then as he got through that, all of a sudden, his language. Language was improving because the biggest thing we saw was memory issues. Massive and easy frustration there to build a wheel that started to just. He started to get better language and more memory. And so we did another round, and this time we were ready.

Of stem cells.

Yes. And it really didn't happen this time. It happened minimally. And we just did another round, and it didn't happen at all.

So each time that you do this round of stem cells, are you needing to harvest them and then re. Inject them or have they already been harvested? And now you're just injecting them.

So what we did. And, you know, when you think about this, I did this, too. This makes so much sense. I have my stem cells harvested, and they're grown and they're in a bank.

Where did you harvest them? From your bone or if you're fat from.

From fat. That was actually the worst part. They took an ounce of fat on my hip, and I swear it was like, the worst experience ever. I don't know how people do liposuction. I'm like, this is the worst.

Oh, my God. It hurts a lot. I did. I did the study at Jeff Voluck's University of Connecticut lab when they did that study in ketogenic athletes, and they did a double fat biopsy on both hips and then had me run on a treadmill for three hours afterwards. So I had to run a treadmill with these two holes poked in both my butt cheeks. It hurt like hell. So they take the stem cell from the fat, and then you've basically banked that for him, and you banked it for yourself as well.

Well, so they took his and they took mine. Right now you're not allowed to use yours for someone else. However, you know, if something were to happen to my other son, like, both Grant and I now have stem cells that would be, you know, okay for him to use. But they haven't gotten to that point yet. Right now you're supposed to use your own. But what. What they do is they harvest your stem cells, they take them to this. They send them out to this facility that grows them, has them there, and I think. Think how cool this is. I mean, I did it to inject into my knee and hip, but now I've got stem cell sitting there if anything happens to me, because, you know, Grant had a knee surgery done, and we had them injected right after the knee surgery. We had it ready, and we had them injected. We took them straight over and had them done. The orthopedic surgeon who did his knee surgery goes, yeah, we're in a clinical trial right now where we're putting stem cells in after surgery. I'm like, well, you know, thanks for not telling me that. You know, but we are doing it anyway. But I think this is going to become just the standard thing. I mean, it seems like the standard, like if you're in a car accident.

My gosh, you know, that that's what I'm. I'm actually headed down to. To Florida in a few weeks to. To bank some of mine. And you had mentioned a website, I believe, was it stem Cell. Was it foundation or something?

My doctor's Dr. Elliot Lander. I'm just going to make sure. I think it's stem cell revolution.

Stem cell revolution, that's right. Okay. Yeah. Is it stemcell revolution.com, something like that or. I just want to make sure I put the link in the show notes for people who want to look into this concept of banking.

Check it. Yeah, I think honestly, to me this makes so much. Oh, stemcellrevolution.com.

Okay, cool. I'll link to that in the show notes for those of you listening in.

But I mean, it has been just a game changer. It was great for Grant that he has, I mean, he had 13 orthopedic injuries complete with a crushed heel where they told him he'd never walk again. I'm like, of course he's gonna, he's an athlete, you know.

Yeah.

But we've been using that. He was supposed to have a massive heel surgery that would have been, you know, it would have been non weight bearing for six months. And now he's not. He's been fine. I can't, you know.

So, yeah, now there's obviously. I mean, I know, I know you're very well connected. I'm actually going to be. For those who are listening. And I'm going down to. J.J. does this thing called a mindshare summit each year and I'm going down there in August in San Diego to attend JJ's Mindshare Summit. She's very well connected with a lot of different biohackers and obviously alternative medical physicians, functional medicine practitioners, et cetera. And so jj, this next question, kind of taking stem cells to the next level in terms of additional, I guess what you would call biohacks or technology or physical therapy modalities, are there things that you've implemented into Grant's recovery since he's come out of the hospital? And kind of as a follow up question to that, I would love to hear where he's at right now and how his recovery has come along.

So my son's now a biohacker. My son. So my son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And what I learned having him as he came out of this whole accident, my first instinct, and you'll get this, as a parent, was to protect him. I mean, I was absolutely had so much PTSD around him, getting hit or anything like this. It was like he'd cross the street and I, you know, go into a panic. And then I realized that this was not helping him at all. And so what I started to do was like, this is. No one told you it was going to be easy. But look what you just went through. You've got this. So what we've been working on now is him really being able to manage his brain chemistry because he's absolutely brilliant. But then he goes through these periods of manic behavior and depression. I'm like, honey, look what you went through. You basically brought yourself back from dead. You can totally manage your brain chemistry. This is up to you. You got this. And you know the minute I threw it back on him that he's going to need to do this, that he's never better than we challenged. He has been so much better about it. And one of the things he did was, and this is not my, like my son prior to the accident that this is why I say he's better than he was before the accident. I could not have imagined him doing this. He has been meditating, but he got this one of those things you can wear around your head that can measure your brain waves. And then he bought some Tesla coils and he set up this system where he gets the energy from the Tesla coils and he uses that and gets in a meditative state and he basically modifies his brain waves. It's crazy cool.

Now is he using, is he using like a hacked together device to monitor brain waves or is he using one of these things like, like Think or Muse or one of these, these headband devices?

He's using one of those head, headband devices. And then he. So he's got that going on his computer and they hacked together this Tesla coil thing and then he gets in front of that and then he puts the other thing on and he monitors his brainwaves and he can modify his brainwaves using the Tesla coil.

Amazing.

And so it's so cool. I'm like going, wow. And then here's the thing.

So it's like he's doing neurofeedback, but rather than simply allowing the neurofeedback to alter his subconscious patterns, he's actually got another device attached to his head that is that he's using to actively almost like shock his brainwaves into the pattern that he wants them to be in.

Yes. And he literally has been able to, you know, things used to irritate him. He wasn't able to manage himself before. And he now uses meditation. He uses this Tesla machine he also has been using. It's like he intuitively knew what he needed. He has been outside in the dirt and it's Interesting. I just did a podcast with Dr. Maya Chitri Klein, who wrote the Dirt Cure, who talks about, like, you know, how we all need to be out in the dirt. I go, it's kind of one of the first things my son did when he got home. Is he like, he started building hydroponic gardens. I'm like, I don't know where this came from. You know, I'd never heard of it. And now the entire, like, the entire backyard of my desert house is torn up and it's become this massive hydroponic garden. We've got a pond. I'm like, okay. You know, so he's done amazing with that. So he's been doing all the grounding stuff. We did neurofeedback. We still do it off and on. Like, we did a big series of it and then we'll just go in periodically. He did hyperbaric and we do that off and on. He does medical marijuana. That's helped him tremendously. So if he gets anxious, he'll do some of that as well. And then early on with the physical therapy, we started working with my buddy who owns this place called Kinetics, Mike Butler, who's a Czech practitioner, nsca. He's amazing and a lot of balance work. So that he was really challenging himself. One of the things Dr. Amen said was get a ping pong table. So we started doing ping pong and, you know, we really just started focusing all the stuff that they said he'd have deficits in. He was diagnosed as deaf in one ear. That happened just as we were leaving the final hospital to go, he can't hear in that one ear. We go to the audiologist, they say he's deaf in this ear and he'll never regain it. And he looked at, he's driving home with me, goes, that's ridiculous. Of course I'll be able to hear again. Like, okay, you know. And he has, he's gotten a lot of hearing back in that ear and worked a lot on the balance. I mean, normally if you've got a hearing deficit in one ear, you'd have balance problems. He has got nothing. So it's really like now he doesn't. He's never been a victim. He never talks about, like, the woman who hit him. And he's a victim of a hit and run. He doesn't ever say that. And he doesn't like to really want people to feel sorry for him for what happens. He knows that he's better because of it. My other son, same thing. Like the whole Family, we know we're all better because of it, but Grant especially, I mean, to know that you could come through something like that, you know, and be better because of it is pretty, you know.

Yeah. And you don't, you don't see a lot of physical therapists using things like ping pong and earthing and grounding and gardening and neurofeedback, but honestly, I think it would be fascinating to see. I know you're busy enough as it is, but like a follow up book where you go into all these little therapies that you've done since then, because it sounds like you've come up with some amazing things.

Well, we wrote a book for that. My biggest goal with this. I'll tell you what's been so upsetting Ben is. I mean, you think of that first night in the hospital, they told us to let him go. And what's upsetting is how many people would have listened.

Yeah.

And you know, I'm hopeful that most parents would be like, oh, hell no. You know, not on my watch. But. And what I found since then is this network of, I call them the warrior moms that are out there going, all right, what do I need to do for my kid? But you know, this, this information largely is underground. You know, it's poo pooed. And the idea that my son could be better than before the accident. The doctors thought I was a nut job, you know. You know, I've had some tell me, well, this is as far as you can expect to go. I'm like, the minute you tell me that, I'm completely discounting you at this point. Moving, going elsewhere. I just think when you ask the right questions and you stay open to possibility, it's incredible. I haven't even come close to exhausting the opportunities out there for Grant to improve. And so I've been documenting it all. I actually created a website for him and an ebook that documents all of what we've done for him because that's.

Oh, you did.

That's what. Yeah, it's on GrantVirgin.com but I wanted GrantVirgin.com. yeah. That everything that we did for him, that, that I knew. I know. I, like, I was fortunate in the access that I have. Like, all my friends are docs doing cutting edge stuff. And so I had incredible resources. But I figure if I have those resources, everybody can then have those resources because I don't want to keep this a secret. Right. I documented it all on Facebook as we were going through it. But you know, we get Emails and posts pretty much every week going, all right, this happened. What do I do? And I just. This information needs to be out there. But the bigger message of, you know, there's. There's so many things out there that you can do. Again, we haven't even done Ted Carrick stuff yet, which I want to do. And there's. There's still more to do. There's some plant medicine stuff with him I think would be helpful. And, you know, I'm. I'm open to every possibility out there. Yeah.

Wow. Well, I was going to ask you about a good resource for people to learn how to navigate the modern medical system and incorporate some of the things that you learn along the way. It sounds like this. This grand virgin.com would be a good place for people to go.

Yeah, I think that's a good start. At least we'll give you what stuff we did. I think the biggest thing, though, to help you navigate anything in life is, is the right mindset. And where I was fortunate with all of this, I already had that mindset going in. If I didn't have it going in, I wouldn't have a son now. I mean, my mindset was anything is possible. You know, question authority. You know, like, take personal responsibility for everything. I wasn't turning it over to anybody. And ask the right questions. Is such a key one here.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've been taking notes furiously as we've been talking, and for those of you listening in who want to read this book, and I would highly recommend it. It's an extremely inspirational book, and it's amazing what JJ did with Grant. I'll put all the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Miracle I'll also put links to some of the other things that JJ and I talked about, like this book When Brains Collide and the book Biology of Belief, along with the link over to GrantVirgin.com, so you guys can take a deeper dive if you want, when you're over there. You can also ask questions or leave your comments and I'll try and reply as much as I can to each and every one of them. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Miracle if you want more from JJ or to access the shownotes from today's show. JJ, thanks so much for coming on and sharing this stuff with us and also for doing all that hard work to navigate the modern medical system and show that you actually can affect change that goes far above and beyond what medicine might expect in a situation like.

This, I actually think we're in the best situation ever because, I mean, there's some incredible things happening in medicine, you know, and it's really about being open to everything out there. And some of it's going to come from the traditional things. Again, that's what saved my son, but that's not what got brought him his life back.

Yeah.

So be open to all of it.

Word. I love it. Well, jj, I'm looking forward to seeing you in August. And thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you. I super appreciate you.

All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with JJ Virgin, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy and amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.