Speaking and Communicating Podcast

I was just presenting at the World Brain Mapping Conference in LA, and this is an international conference.

And I was asked to give two talks, one on treating traumatic brain injury, and one on treating long COVID.

And we're at the banquet that they do, and there's a neurologist sitting at the table with me, and he leans over and says, what is it you said you do?

I briefly explained that we're using infrared light of certain wavelengths to activate the neurons and turn on neuroplasticity within the brain leading to brain repair.

And he shakes his head and says, that's poppycock.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

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Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Dr.

Theodore Henderson.

Joining us, he is a physician, a PhD research scientist who specializes on the brain.

He has published over 70 publications and bringing innovative new treatments for brain disorders.

There's so much more that we're going to unpack.

But before I go any further, please help me introduce Dr.

Henderson.

Hi, Dr.

Henderson.

Hello.

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Roberta.

My absolute pleasure.

Welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Oh, gosh.

I could spend a while.

But I think the best way to summarize the way that I approach medicine and life is that I work outside the box.

In fact, my first question usually is what box?

And so in the case of the brain, I've been working on neuroplasticity.

That is the way that the brain can regrow and reshape itself as a treatment for things that we used to think of as being either untreatable like traumatic brain injury or stroke or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease or things that we treated with a pill that you took every day and it kind of helped sort of kind of maybe not really and had all these side effects like depression and anxiety.

So we have developed and patented a number of new treatments and are working on more new treatments that help to activate the brain's own ability to heal itself.

Here's my question.

And just for quick background, I'm South African and there's a lot of comparing that I do.

Now that I'm in America with how things are dining versus back home.

One of the things that I've noticed, I remember growing up, if I had a headache, I would just slip it out and I wake up.

I have no headache.

I find that here there's just a lot that people resort to medication for.

Is it that's the nature of this society?

Or if you are familiar with any other countries, why is it that in the American environment, there's just always this, let me get a medication for it.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And in fact, in one of the other areas I work in, which is chronic fatigue syndrome, I have patients all over the world on every continent except Antarctica.

So if you know anyone with chronic fatigue syndrome in Antarctica, please let me know.

I really want to put a pin in that map.

But in all seriousness, so I see the perspective of my patients in North Africa, in the Middle East, in Europe, in England, in Asia, in Australia, and how they differ on how to approach their illnesses.

So I have an appreciation for the way in which Americans do indeed depend upon pills.

My lovely wife is Ukrainian.

She has a headache.

It's like, okay, I have a headache.

I'll chill out for a little bit.

I go and I grab three ibuprofen.

And that's that sort of difference, right?

So we see that.

Part of that pill mentality in America is really fostered by the pharmaceutical companies.

They are shoving that literally down our throats, but they're also shoving it down Congress's throat.

So there are more lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry on Capitol Hill than just about any other industry in America.

So there's this real sort of pressure on this, and they've gotten away with a lot of stuff.

I mean, we could go off on the whole Oxycontin controversy, and Oxycontin was presented to doctors for years as a non-addictive, non-addictive painkiller.

Seriously.

This is how they marketed it.

So there's a lot of that mentality that goes into the pill-minded approach.

Now, if we apply that to depression, then it gets really interesting, because what does Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft do?

Oh, well, they increase the serotonin in your brain so that you no longer feel depressed because serotonin causes depression.

I sing-song a little bit of that because that is absolutely nonsense.

It has been disproven over and over again.

There are now five meta-analyses that show that serotonin has nothing to do with depression.

Nothing.

So Prozac works on raising serotonin.

Yes, indeed, it does.

It's great for premenstrual dysphoric disorder, what we call PMS.

Right.

And it works in days.

In fact, it works in hours.

You take a Prozac at the beginning of your menstrual period, your serotonin levels come up within hours, and you sail through your menstrual period.

And believe me, I know that is awful.

I've done the brain scans on people.

I've seen what it does to the functioning of the brain.

It is not pretty.

So I know it's a real thing.

But if Prozac raises serotonin levels within hours, why does it take six weeks for it to work on depression, if at all?

Because it doesn't have anything to do with serotonin.

And yet that's the narrative that's been pushed.

Exactly.

So when you have lobes, like you've explained the background behind why a lot of medication is being pushed, do you then get pushback if somebody like you comes with an alternative?

I have to chuckle.

I was just presenting at the World Brain Mapping Conference in LA, and this is an international conference, and I was asked to give two talks, one on treating traumatic brain injury and one on treating long COVID.

And we're at the banquet that they do, and there's a neurologist sitting at the table with me, and he leans over and says, what is it you said you do?

And so I briefly explained that we're using infrared light of certain wavelengths to activate the neurons and turn on neuroplasticity within the brain leading to brain repair.

And he shakes his head and says, that's poppycock.

A neurologist.

Yes.

Is his response in parallel with, you know, how when you talk about diet and how people get sick because of the food they eat, and then the doctor will say, no, no, no, just take pills, and then people come back with that whole, oh, you know what, I'm not surprised.

Doctors don't learn nutrition in medical school.

But you're exactly right.

If it's not from medical school curriculum, it is not valid.

Exactly right.

Now, let's be fair.

When I was first approached about using infrared light to treat the brain of soldiers and civilians with traumatic brain injury, and let's do a brain scan before and a brain scan after and show how they change, I said, poppycock.

I did.

Because of my training background.

Because of my training background, because how can light get through the scalp and skull?

You know, my colleague, Jenny Faraday, who is a brilliant social worker and far smarter than her degrees, said to me, hey, read the literature.

It brought a stack.

All of the studies were from Harvard.

I started to read through this.

I started to realize, holy Toledo, if we can get to the human brain, we can turn on neuroplasticity.

And so I said, I'll do this.

But we go into the laboratory first, and we figure out how much energy has to be delivered to the scalp to penetrate through the scalp and skull and reach the human brain.

And not just the surface of the brain, you got to get three centimeters in.

You know, if you're going to treat Parkinson's, that's in the middle of the brain.

You have to get in deep.

If you've got a stroke that's deep in the brain, you've got to get in deep in order to be able to heal that, in order to help it.

Now, let's talk about the infrared treatment, which obviously a lot of us are not familiar with.

And being used to, you know, it's medication, it's going to fix this, et cetera.

Is this in any way related to, I don't know, are you familiar with Dr.

Joe Dispenza?

Is it related to how he uses meditation, those long hours of meditation, because he does brain scans as well.

You've talked about looking at brain imaging.

Is there any relation to that, oh, this is just very different, and it's a different process all together?

It's a very, very complex and insightful question.

So I'll endeavor to answer it.

I'm going to break it down a little bit.

So let's take meditation first.

And I don't pretend to be an expert on meditation.

I prescribe meditation to my patients, but understanding the full depth of the neurobiology, but I can't say that I do.

But meditation is a way of training up pathways that don't get used enough, so that they get used more and more.

There's an old line in neurobiology, axons that fire together, wire together.

So the more that something is practiced, it's like learning to type.

The more something is practiced, the better the brain becomes at doing it.

And with meditation, you're actually activating a number of circuits that help to reduce stress and reduce cortisol levels.

And cortisol is destructive to the brain.

So you're removing a toxin.

So in a nutshell, meditation is a restorative and a neuroplasticity-inducing modality on its own accord.

Now, contrast that with the infrared light.

What the Harvard folks showed was that if you take a half-watt light, half-watt LED, and you shine it on the head of a mouse that you've whacked in the head with a machine, then over time the injury to the brain will heal.

And it heals because it's turning on a growth factor that is critical to neuroplasticity.

That growth factor is called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF.

It happened to be what I did some of my post-doctoral research on, so I know it well.

They also showed that, you know, new synapses formed, new dendrites formed, and the lesion got smaller, and the animal was able to function better, then animals got whacked in the head in exactly the same way, but weren't treated with infrared light.

Now, they also did this with stroke models, then they did it with depression models.

And so there is all this literature that, yes, you can shine a half watt LED light, and the thickness of a mouse's scalp and skull is six sheets of paper.

So a half watt LED gets through and reaches the brain.

Well, our skulls are a lot thicker than that, mine being thicker than most.

We're sitting around 90 sheets of paper, so a half a watt, it's not going to reach the brain.

And we figured out that you needed to be in the multi-watt range, around 10 to 13 watts, delivered to the scalp and skull for even a third of a watt to reach the surface of the brain.

And there's this critical window of activation of energy that has to be delivered to the mitochondria, which are the little organelles that make energy in the neurons, is that certain bracketed, certain range, and you had to hit that range to get this beneficial effect.

So we figured out how to do that.

Now, when you do that, the mitochondria activate, they make more energy, and they also start sending signals to the DNA to make BDNF, and also other growth factors, and also anti-inflammatory factors.

And this is why, frankly, it doesn't matter what the disorder is.

Depression makes a neuron sick.

Alzheimer's makes a neuron sick.

PTSD makes a neuron sick.

Long COVID makes a neuron sick.

I could go on and on.

ADHD makes a neuron sick.

Autism makes a neuron sick.

But if you treat a sick neuron and you make it healthier, guess what?

The disorder gets better.

You go into the root of the problem.

Yes.

This light, this infrared light.

So how often should you do that?

Is that a once-off thing?

And then the body starts to heal itself?

That would be fantastic.

But what happens is a tiny little bit starts with one treatment.

So the number of treatments needed, and we'll talk about multi-watt versus low power here in a moment, but the number of treatments needed with multi-watt infrared light is variable.

But 20 to 30 is a good number to put out there.

Now, what we do clinically is it's individualized.

So a patient comes in, they get baseline testing, then they get 10 treatments, and we repeat the testing.

If everything's fine, and they say, wow, this is amazing, I feel great, go home, you're done.

If there's still stuff to work on, we do another 10, and then we repeat the testing.

And if there's still stuff to work on, do another 10 and repeat the testing.

So, 20 to 30 is a reasonable number to think about.

Now, the thing to emphasize about multi-water infrared light therapy is that the patients we treated back in 2013, 2014, and published our 2015 paper, so 10 plus years ago, they're doing fine.

They are just fine.

Their traumatic brain injury symptoms are gone, they're working, they're living the life of Riley, they're fine.

So it's not like you had to come back and get repeat treatments for something like traumatic brain injury.

Now, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, depression, those are genetic disorders.

We're not changing the genes, so they can recur.

But our patients that we treated with depression, and by the way, 93 percent of them got better.

Now compare that to Prozac, which is 17 percent, or TMS, if you're lucky, a 50 percent response rate, or ketamine, a 72 percent response rate, 93 percent got better.

Now, some of them over time had a recurrence of depression, and they came back and got more treatments, but others have continued to find on maybe one antidepressant, five antidepressants plus an antipsychotic.

It's radically different.

Now low-power infrared light is different, if you want, I can explain that.

Yes, please do.

There's a lot of low-power infrared light devices being sold out there.

I'm not going to name any names, but medical contraption and hoods, and they put out half a watt.

How effective is that?

You're on to it.

Half a watt doesn't even penetrate human skin.

But the clinical trials of these low-power infrared light devices have shown, look at this, the folks with traumatic brain injury get a little bit better.

The folks with depression get a little bit better.

It's statistically significant.

I mean, not much, but they're a little bit better.

The problem is, it's a small benefit, and as soon as you stop daily treatments, it goes away.

It goes low watts anyway, so either constant treatment or it's not going to be effective at all.

You're trading taking a pill every day for sitting for an hour with a device on your head that looks kind of goofy for the rest of your life, so it's a radical difference.

You just said that when it comes to things like depression, it's genetic, but didn't earlier when you were explaining how it gets to your DNA, so you still cannot change that.

Right.

Yeah.

We've been studying the genetics of depression for 35, 45 years.

We got the same cadre of genes.

23andMe did this big study looking at depression, and they came up with the same cadre of five or six genes that seem to be involved.

I have a whole chapter in my book on that genetic problem.

We can't solve that genetic problem yet.

So that slow grind of whatever messes up your cell's ability to repair itself or to make new synapses or maintain the synapses it has, that's still there.

You say that sometimes depression is caused by infections as in physical effects?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes.

Please explain.

Well, I mentioned earlier that one of my other areas of work is chronic fatigue syndrome.

And chronic fatigue syndrome, it's a syndrome, so it's poorly defined, but people have terrible fatigue, they're tired all the time.

They have terrible sleep, they don't feel rested when they wake up in the morning.

If they over exert themselves, they will have a crash, that is that they feel much, much worse.

They have flu-like symptoms, and that can last for days or even weeks.

And some people just go crash, crash, they just live one crash after another.

So some of these people are bedridden, and some of these people are functioning, but they go to work, they come home, they eat something, and they go to bed.

And that's their life.

When I was starting to treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I came to this from the neuroimaging perspective.

Almost everything that I do, I started with neuroimaging.

So I was doing functional brain scans, what are called SPEC scans, which allows to see what's working well and what's working poorly in the brain.

And we had patients who would come in saying, I think I've had a stroke because I can't remember things, and I'm tired all the time and blah, blah, blah.

And so we had to do a SPEC scan.

There is no evidence of a stroke.

In fact, what there was was this modeled looking attack on the brain, all over the entire brain just looked like it was under attack, like it was toxic or infected.

Now, some brilliant work by Dr.

Lerner, he was in Ohio, he's passed away now.

He identified that patients who had Epstein-Barr virus, also known as herpes 4, the cause of mononucleosis, would often have this chronic fatigue syndrome.

And they would even have cardiovascular symptoms of tachycardia or palpitations, things like that.

And when he treated that with an antiviral, their fatigue got better, sleep got better, their tachycardia went away, their palpitations went away, they got healthy.

So I didn't invent this.

This is one of the things I did not invent.

This is learner's work, but I grabbed hold of that and started to treat people with chronic fatigue.

And lo and behold, what happened was their depressions went away.

Or they said, gosh, Doc, I'm no longer anxious.

I don't need to be on the Xanax, or I don't need to have three glasses of wine before I go to a party because they make me so anxious I can't not drink.

And people were giving up drinking, people were getting off their medications, people were getting off their antidepressants.

People were stopped having seizures.

I had patients who had been sent to me by the neurologists of the University of Colorado saying, oh, will they have a treatment-resistant depression and seizures and go treat the depression?

And when I took a look at their brain, it's like, no, this is toxic.

This is infected.

And by treating them with an infection, their cognition got better, they stopped having seizures, their depression went away.

And I had one gentleman, he could not believe, he said, this is nuts.

There is no way a virus is causing this.

This is nuts.

I'm going to stop taking the antiviral.

And the thing that's stuck in my head is that his family liked to pay jeopardy as a board game, and he was starting to win at jeopardy.

So he's getting his mental function back, right?

He's no longer depressed.

He stopped having seizures.

He's winning at jeopardy.

Three weeks into this, you know, not taking his antiviral, he calls me up and says, Doc, my wife threatened to divorce me if I didn't get back on the antivirals.

What was happening?

He was losing at jeopardy.

He was forgetting things.

He was getting depressed again, and he had had a seizure.

Oh, no.

And she said, that's it.

This stuff works as crazy as it sounds.

So I wear the moniker, crazy Dr.

Henderson with pride.

It does sound crazy, doesn't it?

As I said, because this is not general knowledge.

Correct.

Yeah.

That's why you do receive the responses that you do.

But the thing is, there's just so much to unpack on the subject.

And in layman's terms, like you said, that you really try as a PhD, you did your research, and when you're a doctor, so you're speaking a lot of scientific terms, but you can actually break it down for us.

Well, thank you.

I try.

My pleasure.

So what can you now say if somebody is experiencing the symptoms?

Or they do have depression, long COVID.

By the way, long COVID, how long is that?

Untreated, it can be a lifetime.

We're not 20 years out, so we don't have that for a fact.

So long COVID is caused by three things.

And to the best of our knowledge, there's a couple of outlier theories.

One outlier theory is, oh, well, long COVID causes your blood to clot more.

So you got little microclots all through your brain and your lungs, and that's why you don't feel good.

Well, it's much more likely that it's inflammation.

Remember the cytokine storm?

That's your immune system just going bananas.

And so that inflammation persists in the brain and in the lungs, and in joints, and etc., etc.

The second thing is that cytokine storm is the perfect trigger for Epstein-Barr virus to reactivate, to come out of dormancy and reactivate.

And the model for that is shingles.

You get chickenpox as a kid, two, three days of illness, and then it goes away.

But decades later, suddenly you get shingles.

Well, when is it that people typically get shingles?

When they get physically sick?

When they get psychologically stressed?

When they get emotionally stressed?

Or when they're getting older and their immune system is dropping in its efficacy?

And the third common cause of long COVID is the reactivation of a bacterial illness, such as Lyme disease.

And so on the East Coast, and now Lyme is in Illinois, and it's in Indiana, and it's in Missouri.

So Lyme is spreading across the country.

And so reactivation of Borrelia, Lyme disease, can be a cause of long COVID.

I have a patient who came up here from Texas.

Lyme is pretty low on the list of possibilities.

But he's already gone to the famous Lyme Center at the University of Texas, I won't name which one.

And he was told, oh, well, yeah, you've got long COVID and, oh, you've got Epstein-Barr activation, but we don't have a treatment for that.

You don't have a treatment for that.

Do you guys read the literature?

So he's come to our clinic.

I've started him on antivirals.

He started getting infrared light treatment.

He's had six treatments.

He already has more energy.

Wow.

He's already seeing the difference of the six treatments.

Exactly.

Doctor, if anyone is listening, and you know the whole spectrum when it comes to people affording medical care in America, if they think this sounds expensive and not affordable probably by the regular guy, what is it that you can recommend if they have one of these?

Or if they've had the brain injury, they've got the depression, all of the things that you've listed.

Let's take two.

Let's take brain injury first.

So, if you've had a brain injury, then you are impaired.

You have lost your full capacity to enjoy life and to work and make money.

In fact, you may not be able to work at all, and therefore, not only are you now not contributing and not bringing in your own money, which makes you feel like a full human being, but you might be draining the family, you might be draining on the health care system.

That supports people who cannot work.

We won't talk about who's trying to destroy that.

So when they invest the money, say $7,000 in treatments, all of a sudden, they have the capacity to go back to work at a $70,000 salary.

You know, our veteran who had had multiple concussions because he was a bomb diffuser, he went back to work as an electrician at a local brewery here.

He started out at $70,000.

He's now making $90,000.

That would be impossible without investing $7,000.

So that's one example.

The second example is depression.

Depression is arguably, you know, okay, there are pills that I can take that will help me deal with my depression.

Yeah, it's true that I can't make love with my spouse as well as I used to be.

And I don't have that broad range of emotion.

And I go to the comedy club, and I sort of go haha rather than full-bodied laughing.

Because it's squished, right?

Your emotions are squished by these antidepressants.

You know, okay, maybe I'm not paying.

Maybe I'm on Prozac, I'm paying $2 a month.

But maybe you're on Deloxity, and you're paying $50 a month.

Or maybe you're on Ovility, and you're paying $1,000 a month.

You know, it depends on the medicine.

But every month, you're paying out that medicine price.

And every year, you know, you are living life going, meh.

You don't have that drive.

You don't have that passion.

You don't have that joy.

One of my patients who we treated 10 years ago, every December, she sends me an email or a letter and says, I continue to live a life of joy.

That's the difference.

How much does that work?

Health as well.

Yeah.

Like you said, if you're healthy, then you are capable of doing everything else that you would not have been able to do had you not invested in your health.

And the last words of wisdom, anything I haven't asked you that you were hoping to share today, especially for us who I knew to this information, because it's not as mainstream as it should be.

I'll reiterate that the important thing in thinking of brain health these days.

Number one, your brain is everything.

Your brain is what you think and what you feel.

Your brain is the seed of faith.

Everything comes from your brain.

So the healthier your brain, the healthier you are and the longer you live.

And so thinking about neuroplasticity and making the brain cells healthy, regardless of whether the illness is PTSD or depression or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or long COVID, making the brain cells as healthy as possible.

That's not just come get infrared light at Dr.

Henderson's clinic and all will be well in the universe.

It's also about lifestyle.

You know, what you eat, meditating, exercise.

All of those things are a critical part of a healthy brain.

Very true.

And speaking of lifestyle, because there's so much going on and just this preoccupation with the news, everything's going on, and then it creates worry and anxiety constantly.

You're in this, it's just dumped on you.

Is there a way to ignore it?

Is there a way to just be calm?

You've mentioned meditation, of course, but how do those things affect us on a daily when it comes to just trying to live this lifestyle of nourishing our brains?

Well, I have to admit, my cortisol levels are through the roof.

I am so stressed by all of this.

So one thing is limit the amount of news.

Don't watch an hour.

The second is get active.

This isn't supposed to be political.

But depending on where you're at, for example, Indivisible is it doesn't matter what your particular cause is, but this brings together people.

All these massive rallies that have occurred across the country, those are grassroots grown.

So by getting together with other people, you start to share some of that anxiety, and that makes it less severe.

You know, Kamala Harris said that fear is infectious, but so is courage.

And that's, I think, really, really true.

It's funny, because I always drummed this up, and I'm sure my listeners are tired of me.

I sound like a breaking record.

I come from a country where community is everything, and I've noticed here that everybody is very individualistic.

You keep to yourself.

I've always wondered how that affects the brain as well.

Is that the reason there are more Americans with anxiety than South Africans?

Not that we don't have problems.

Oh, we got our own set of problems.

But is that what you were referring to just now?

Absolutely.

So let's go biology for just a second.

Any one of your listeners and viewers who spent time with horses, you can't go grab one of the horses and just ride off from the rest of the group of horses.

They don't like that.

For them, being with the group is safe, and so it becomes as you're battling the horse against their biology.

We, primates, humans, are social animals.

We grew up in groups.

We lived in groups.

We did that for protection.

We did that because we crave social interaction.

What's the worst punishment you can do to someone?

You can put them in isolation, right?

That is the biggest, the worst punishment in prison is put them in isolation.

So we are social creatures and we crave that social interaction.

We crave connection to other people.

That is why, in part, it feels better when you get active and you're out there with a group of people holding a sign.

Instead of being isolated.

Your book, Brighter Days Ahead, you said it has some of the stories you've spoken about today?

And many, many more, yes.

Great.

And is there any one last thing that the listeners, when they buy the book, can look forward to?

You know, I have to say that everyone who has given me feedback in the book has said that they really enjoyed the read.

And I didn't set out to write a piece of fiction.

I was trying to help educate the world, but it's a fun read.

And there's some nice, really heartwarming anecdotes.

There's some precious moments about my relationship with my daughter in the book as well.

So it's a fun read in many ways.

Including, of course, the science.

There you go.

Excellent stuff.

Words of wisdom from Dr.

Theodore Henderson, the physician, PhD research scientist, president and founder of Neuraluminance, who has published over 70 publications when it comes to the brain and how to activate the brain's own healing treatment.

Thank you very much for teaching us so much about the brain today and how we can heal from what we are told mostly either cannot be cured or you're going to have to spend the rest of your life in medication.

So we really appreciate you being here today.

Absolutely.

It's my pleasure.

And before you go, would you like our listeners to reach out to you and where?

Absolutely.

So healmybrain.info will take you to our website, healmybrain.info.

Healmybrain.info to reach out to Dr.

Theodore Henderson.

And the book is Brighter Days Ahead.

Thank you very much, Dr.

Henderson.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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