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Sept. 25, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:46:41
Joe Rogan Experience #700 - Dr. Mark Gordon & Andrew Marr
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a
andrew marr
24:45
d
dr mark gordon
46:48
j
joe rogan
34:06
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
And boom, we're live.
Before you take any of Dr. Gordon's advice, I just want you to know, folks, he's scared of shrimp, shellfish, pork, he's never had wild game, and he refuses to eat outside of a very narrow dietary discipline.
He's got like a very, what is it?
Halal, is that?
unidentified
You really do that?
joe rogan
You really eat halal?
dr mark gordon
I don't eat pork.
joe rogan
You don't eat pork.
dr mark gordon
No pork.
joe rogan
That's, but you know about bacon, right?
When was the last time you've had it?
andrew marr
I had turkey bacon a day.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, I had turkey bacon, absolutely.
joe rogan
That's just pathetic.
dr mark gordon
Turkey sausage, turkey bacon.
joe rogan
Sex with two condoms on.
This is totally unnecessary.
dr mark gordon
Well, some of us don't even use that.
joe rogan
But how could you eat turkey bacon and not eat the real bacon bacon?
dr mark gordon
I used to eat it, but after getting sick...
joe rogan
No one got sick ever in the history of the world from bacon.
dr mark gordon
Do you eat bread?
joe rogan
Yes.
dr mark gordon
You have no problems with gluten?
joe rogan
Well, I don't have a problem with gluten.
dr mark gordon
Okay, there's a lot of people who do have a problem with gluten.
Well, I have a problem with pig.
joe rogan
You don't have any problems with pig.
How dare you?
dr mark gordon
My stool doesn't look as good as it does when I'm not on it.
joe rogan
What are you doing?
Going over your stool with a fine-tooth comb?
dr mark gordon
You better believe it.
unidentified
You should look at your stool every morning.
joe rogan
We're here with Dr. Mark Gordon, my good friend, and his friend Andrew Marr.
What is your position in the Warrior Angels Foundation?
andrew marr
I founded it, Joe.
Founder and former Green Beret.
joe rogan
Tell us all about what it's about and what the mission is.
andrew marr
Yeah, absolutely.
Our mission is to get no-cost traumatic brain injury treatment to veterans who need it.
So it's an alternative means to get guys treatment outside of the medical model, which is predicated on medication and psychotherapy, which does not improve quality of life.
joe rogan
Is that changing at all because of, you know, all the work that Dr. Gordon has been doing and there's been a lot of...
I've heard outside of you even mention of your name, people bringing up your therapies and the things that you've been promoting for several years.
Is that changing in the community at all?
andrew marr
We're working to change it actively.
So we're going to have a meeting next month with some top people on the active duty side of the house.
We're also meeting with our...
and works of getting with the Veterans Administration So we're going, they're going to know everything across the board about these protocols, why they work, why they're better, how they're cost efficient, how they're time efficient, how this can not only improve a soldier's life, but the life of the family, child, second order effects, go on and on and on.
So the evidence is out there.
The science is behind it.
This isn't false hope.
We're not offering any false hope.
Everything is science, evidence-based.
Reporting that we're doing and based off Dr. Gordon's clinical application of years and years of doing it.
So the short answer is yes, they're hearing about it and we have a five-year plan to overtake the system and have them implement these on both sides of the house, so to speak.
joe rogan
Now, for people who haven't heard any of our podcasts before and haven't heard your discussion about it, one of the biggest issues that we're experiencing with soldiers coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq is, if you hear my voice, I've got a little bit of a cold, ladies and gentlemen.
Traumatic brain injury.
dr mark gordon
From eating elk.
joe rogan
How dare you?
It's a pig.
Bacon and a clam.
A lot of soldiers are coming back from these wars with injuries that may have been fatal in the past.
They're no longer because of all these advancements in medical technology.
They're still dealing with the ongoing effects of the war, the traumatic brain injury.
Now, what you have found, and many others have supported this, is that a lot of this is there's damage to the pituitary gland, it stops the production of hormones, this leads to deep depression, it leads to some pretty significant issues that soldiers are facing.
So if you could just fill people in on that.
dr mark gordon
What we found is that because of the body armor being so efficient, a lot of the blast damage instead of killing someone is leaving them with trauma to the brain.
And any form of trauma to the brain, whether or not it's a blast trauma, being hit on the head, slip and fall, an automobile accident, turning upside down, or whatever the situation might be, The brain changes its chemistry because of inflammation, and that's from tearing of little nerves.
It's not only the pituitary, and that's been some of the problem that we've had, is focusing, as I focus on a narrow kind of diet, focusing in on just the pituitary.
But what we found is a group of chemistry in the brain called neurosteroids, which regulate our personality.
And some of those neurosteroids have names like testosterone or dihydrotestosterone, estrogen, pregnenolone.
And the literature has been around since about 1986 showing that these regulate our brain function.
So head trauma of any sort can cause it to decrease, number one.
Number two, with any form of damage to the brain you get inflammation.
And that inflammation expands, let's say, if there was a small area of tear in the brain or a bullet that penetrated a penetrating injury to the head, that area where the bullet or the foreign object diminished the amount of brain tissue, it grows larger because of inflammation.
It destroys more and more neurons.
And the more cells in the brain that are called neurons are destroyed, the greater the onset of cognitive impairment, your ability to use your brain in function, And then emotionality changes.
joe rogan
Now, how did you get involved in this?
And how did you figure out what so many people hadn't figured out?
With the emphasis on therapy and pain medication, antidepressants, how did you see through that?
dr mark gordon
Well, I really didn't discover anything.
All I did was, in reading the literature as much as I read it, saw that people had already laid the pathway for me to follow.
And I followed it intensely for the past Well, 21 years doing endocrinology and the past 10 years doing specifically neuroendocrinology, which deals with the brain.
And it's in my population of patients.
I used to see them for hormone deficiency and then started going back asking them, those with the hormone deficiency, if they've had any kind of head trauma.
In the first book that I wrote, which had the first introduction for me to write about traumatic brain injury and hormone deficiency, was a young kid by the name of Michael who had come to me.
His parents brought him in and he had hormone deficiency and we corrected.
His personality improved.
His quality of life improved.
And then read an article, which I've shared with you in the past, which came out of Turkey, about pugilists who had this specific growth hormone deficiency, and that was my epiphany article, where I started looking further and further into literature, and Muhtay, they had hormone deficiency, and then Boom!
All the hormone deficiencies.
So this kid, I went back to him and said, have you ever had any trauma of any kind?
He said, well, when he was 17, he was 21 at the time.
When he was 17, he was in a motorcycle accident and was in a coma for three days.
He came out of the coma, and his neurologist said, oh, you'll be fine.
Well, he progressively got worse.
So that set the stage for me to start looking at this relationship between any kind of head trauma, and then in 2007, my first military was a Green Beret.
I met the wife, who was an emergency room doc in North Carolina, and she called me and told me about her husband, who was six tours of duty, was having some problems.
We donated the money for him to get the full testing and it turned out he was hormone deficient.
When we corrected his hormones, he was back in the good light with the military.
He was getting ready to get kicked out for insubordination.
And that progressed on in 2009 with opening up our practice to military.
And it just kept on repeating itself.
The same pattern, the same head trauma, blast injury, and hormone deficiency.
joe rogan
And now, how's this being received in the rest of the medical community?
dr mark gordon
Well, this is an uphill battle because the way it's being treated presently, if you look at the literature from 2012, 410,000 servicemen came back as veterans and were diagnosed with PTSD. Now, post-traumatic stress disorder is usually perceived as being a psychologically precipitated event where they witnessed something that was horrifying to them.
Death of a friend, loss of a limb, or whatever the situation might have been to stimulate it.
And that immediately opened them up to simple treatment.
Here, take this packet of antidepressants and you'll get better.
Well, they didn't get better.
So they didn't get better because they were having what's called treatment-resistant depression, which now we find is due to hormonal deficiency.
If you look at the civilian population, people with treatment-resistant depression, you check them out and they're testosterone deficient or estrogen overdose or low progesterone.
Or low-pregnenolone, other chemicals that are in our brain.
And these individuals have been the foundation of what I do in trying to find a simple way to replenish them.
What you have to do is test them.
And that's not being done.
It's so much easier just to hand a packet and say you have PTSD when the majority of them are traumatic brain injury.
And I was on Dr. Drew's show with one of our patients who was an army corpsman and he didn't have a single scratch on his body.
But within two years of leaving, separating from the service, he started developing depression, mood swings, explosive personality.
He ends up coming into our program And we find out he has two and a half hormone deficiencies, and the pattern is indicative of having had head trauma.
Well, it turned out he would walk behind Abramson tanks as they were discharging their shells, and he said, man, my body would shudder.
And he was around javelin missiles, he was around repetitive gunfire.
He personally didn't have a scratch on him.
joe rogan
That's incredible that just the recoil, just the boom, just the sonic boom, the impact, that that, you know, shocking his body can do that to you.
unidentified
Right.
dr mark gordon
There are books out, and the government has lots of books out on blast trauma.
In fact, one of the amazing things for me to have read was the Army did a study on...
Individuals who had had blast damage, blast trauma.
No physical ailment, just blast.
And they put them on a simple product called N-acylcysteine, NAC, and those that were on it got better.
But how come we're not hearing about...
joe rogan
What is that stuff?
dr mark gordon
N-acylcysteine, it's a precursor to glutathione, which is the number one anti-inflammatory, excuse me, anti-free radical antioxidant system in our brain.
And it becomes deficient.
It's endogenous within our system.
joe rogan
And glutathione is the same stuff that you recommend taking after you booze it?
dr mark gordon
Well, yeah.
Glutathione helps with metabolism in the liver to detoxify.
andrew marr
Here's the thing about NAC, though, also that Mark told me, and I'm on that product, but if I was taking that while I was still operating, the problems that I had never would have happened.
They would have cut it off.
So we can essentially cut off these problems just by Being proactive and preventative in this way.
So if we were right now today to administer to all Special Operations Soldiers, NAC, a lot of these problems that we're having, out the window.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
andrew marr
That's crazy, right?
dr mark gordon
It's true.
Preventative medicine.
You know, a lot of what's going on is all, you know, trying to catch up.
Always trying to catch up with what we do is proactive.
We see patterns in the blood that if we let them keep on sliding, Until they're sick, they'll get even, you know, absolutely sick.
And the medical model right now is, right the second you're not sick, let's wait until you get sick before we do something.
andrew marr
Yeah.
joe rogan
One of the more shocking things in working with the UFC is we got involved with, we do these events called Fight for the Troops.
We do them on bases.
And we got involved with the Intrepid Foundation, I believe it's called Intrepid Foundation for Excellence.
You find out how little money the government gives them, and how much they have to raise outside, and doing functions like these big UFC events, and that to me was one of the most disturbing things about those events.
I'm like, how is it possible that we can have all this money for all these different missions, all this money for all these different things, but we don't have money to take care of these guys when they come back home?
That seems criminal.
andrew marr
It's unethical, at a minimum.
joe rogan
To the highest level.
If you count on soldiers to do what you ask of them and put their body on the line to complete missions, and then you don't take care of them when they come back, how do you ever expect anybody to be patriotic?
andrew marr
Well, here's the thing, Joe.
There's millions of dollars spent on me, personally, on my training.
And then you can't put a number on that experience, right?
So to produce a special operations soldier, millions of dollars.
So it makes sense to put in proper preventative programs to make sure those guys are performing at elite levels, right?
We're going to do that for our We're going to do that for our vehicles, for our aircraft.
Why would we not do that for the same thing as our guys?
But you know what?
We're not waiting for anybody else to come up and say, okay, we're going to do this.
I'm following Dr. Gordon's lead, started the foundation, and we're doing it.
And we're changing it from the inside out, from top to bottom, from bottom to top.
joe rogan
Well, I think maybe it takes guys like you that are on the inside to do that.
andrew marr
Yeah.
joe rogan
I feel like the bureaucrats, the people that are in the air-conditioned offices that are, you know, deciding where money goes, they don't have a stake in it.
unidentified
They're disconnected.
andrew marr
They're disconnected.
So they don't feel it and they don't understand it.
But it's simple because we're providing science, evidence-based solutions.
Not bitching or griping, complaining.
Offering solutions based on science.
joe rogan
And how long have you been involved with this foundation?
andrew marr
We started January 1 of this year.
joe rogan
So just kicking off?
andrew marr
I was just medically retired in June.
So I started up, I was actually, I had to go outside of the military medical system to get alternative treatment.
Alternative being not medication, not psychotherapy.
When I mean medication, very similar to when Matt Gosney was on here, the Navy SEAL. You know, I was on 13 different meds.
And before you know it, like, You're not the person that you used to be.
You know, I was capable of performing at an elite level in situations of life and death, consistently and reliably.
And then, all of a sudden, I have a problem, you know, Handling things that just don't add up.
You know, your behavior is not right.
I can't remember things.
Driving home, I don't know where I'm at.
Five years I've driven that route every day.
All of a sudden I look up, you don't know where you're at.
Writing a sentence in the middle of it, I don't know what I'm writing about.
You know what I mean?
So those kind of things.
So it was easy for me to put my hand up and say, hey, this is, this is, something's going on here.
This is not right.
And I was basically saying, hey, I'm on fire.
Somebody needs to put this fire out.
And they just kept throwing medication and medication and medication.
And then you start having anxiety attacks, which was completely foreign to me, right?
That was something that some other person, a weak person's problem, as I perceived it.
And now I'm having these anxiety attacks where I'm breaking down emotionally and crying in public.
And I can't, I have no control over it.
And happening in front of my family, my wife, my kids.
And I was just like, hey, enough is enough.
And going out, trying to find different things led me to Mark, Dr. Gordon.
And he introduced me to his protocols.
He actually sent me an email.
And in the first line, he says, hey, Andrew, you know, I'm this and we're doing this.
And I'm not a coop, by the way.
And I was like, okay, I like that.
I like that guy.
joe rogan
Very debatable.
andrew marr
Great introduction.
I'm not a kook.
I'm interested in what he's doing.
joe rogan
Kooks will always tell you they're not kooks.
Of course.
andrew marr
That's why I was drawn to him.
dr mark gordon
By the way.
joe rogan
I'm crazy.
So do you have a specific injury or a specific moment where things changed for you?
andrew marr
I was an explosive breacher, so I was in around explosions for my entire career.
You know what I mean?
I was only knocked unconscious one time in combat.
But the thing that Mark was saying, and this goes outside the veteran population, this goes with anybody, but the symptoms can come in months, Weeks, years, days, whatever.
Later, right?
So it wasn't attributed to any one thing.
So six months later after my last deployment, I'm starting to have these problems.
They're starting to manifest.
And when I'm bringing this up to the attention, you know, it's like, okay, well, this is a psychological issue.
And I'm like, well, I've been doing this for a long time.
This is what I want to be doing.
That's bullshit.
It's not a psychological issue.
And, you know, here's why.
I wouldn't be able to perform like this and all of a sudden I just can't do it.
And, and, um, So that was just very frustrating, you know, in that regard, trying to come out and try to find some real answers.
And only, like Mark said, what it takes is an individualized approach, right?
And that uses evidence-based diagnostics to pinpoint and treat the underlying condition.
But nobody was trying to figure out my whole, you know, story.
And when you don't do that, you just find out what the symptoms are and you treat those symptoms with medication, then you're not doing anything to fix it.
So that's kind of why it's hard for, I think, the medical community to understand it right now, because if you have a problem and you can't necessarily attribute that to a major accident or a major injury or a major explosion, then it's like, okay, well, we don't know what it is.
It's a psychological problem.
We're going to put him on packet A, and we'll see how he is in two weeks.
joe rogan
Yeah, that expression, psychological issue, is a real tricky one, isn't it?
Because your psychological makeup, a lot of times, is dependent upon your physical health.
And what's going on in your body can greatly affect your mind, but when someone says psychological issue, especially for a guy like you, what they're trying to say is that you're weak.
andrew marr
Right.
joe rogan
They're trying to say that you can't handle the pressure.
andrew marr
Absolutely.
joe rogan
And that you're cracking, and this is what it is.
dr mark gordon
The integrity, it's called comorbid, and this is an argument that's going back between the psychiatric world and the non-psychiatric world.
Where in comorbid, which came first, the situation that precipitated depression or the depression that develops the situation?
In this particular instance relative to Andrew, his chemistry of his body was doing great until he had that group of insults to him, whether or not it was that huge truck that got blown up 100 feet in the air and you got the shockwave that knocked you out.
Or the repetitive gunfire that you had or the breaching that you were doing.
andrew marr
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?
It's different for everybody.
dr mark gordon
Everybody is so different.
So what happens is as you start losing these hormones, I mean, one of the hormones that I've repeated a number of times and I'll repeat again, pregnenolone has been found to control the anxiety effect in the body, in the brain.
So morning anxiety or pregnenolone or social anxiety Can be affected and you know I have patients who have been in auto accidents who've never had anxiety attacks or panic attacks and they wake up six months after the injury and they've got morning anxiety.
Their pregnenolone levels instead of being average about 110 or down at six or seven you correct them back to 110 their anxiety disappears.
joe rogan
What is pregnenolone?
dr mark gordon
Pregnenolone is called the mother of all hormones.
It comes from cholesterol.
It's the first Hormone or steroid hormone, official steroid hormone that comes off of cholesterol.
So if we interrupt cholesterol in our body, we lose pregnenolone, which becomes the precursor to DHEA and testosterone on one side and progesterone and cortisol on another side.
With low pregnenolone, it can lead to all the hormones that help to regulate our brain function and our life.
Cortisol, if you don't have cortisol, you get a syndrome called Adson's disease, and you can die.
joe rogan
And most people associate cortisol with high levels of it being problematic, right?
dr mark gordon
Stress, correct.
Stress.
Stress-related.
And, you know, everybody thinks it's emotional stress, but there are five stressors.
You know, there's Emotional or intellectual stress, emotional stress, physical stress, nutritional stress can precipitate high amounts of cortisol.
If you're fasting, cortisol goes up.
And then there's chemical stress like chemotherapy or certain medication that you take, alcohol too, certain drugs can do it.
And they can influence the adrenal glands production of cortisol, which is called an adaptogen, which allows you to go from one level of physical functioning, mental functioning to another.
It adapts, helps you to adapt.
joe rogan
You know, I gotta tell you, when I have these conversations with you about this issue, it's kind of frustrating to me because it seems like you're making all this sense and you're talking about this broad spectrum of different hormones and all these different variables that exist in the human mind and how important they are to maintain proper levels of them for health, for function.
But there's not a lot of people like you out there that are talking about this.
What you're saying is a fairly controversial treatment.
andrew marr
Dr. Gordon put it to me like this.
He's like, this is like 1960, and we're saying we were going to put a man on the moon by 1969, and everybody says, you guys are batshit crazy.
You know what I mean?
That's where we're at.
joe rogan
It seems like, is it because there's not a lot of motivation for innovation when it comes to treatment?
What's the resistance to understanding all these different variables?
dr mark gordon
If for 30 plus years you've been told that you treat depression by giving this pill, that's either an SSRI or an ABCD or whatever it is, You're going to give that pill.
And if someone comes in, a kook comes in and says, look it, the literature for the past 35 years, even as far back as 1958 with DHEA showing that DHEA is antidepressant, you come in with these natural products that have no patents on it, That you can walk into a GNC, you can get it from Onnit, you can get it from any of these companies, and take it natural, 100% natural coming from Mexican wild yams, and it fixes your depression.
And it costs you 3 cents a day, 5 cents a day, 10 cents a day, as opposed to the cost for some of these other medication.
Who are you going to believe?
This kook who talks about over-the-counter product or the pharmaceutical rep who talks about this prescription medication?
joe rogan
That is the problem, right?
Official sounding names and designations.
unidentified
Correct.
dr mark gordon
And I got it.
And it's an uphill battle in the way that I approach it with my science background, not just medical, but the science research I did in the beginning.
Is to line up all the information, irrefutable information, and hand it to someone and read it.
joe rogan
See, for a dummy like me, who's obviously on the outside of all this, what frustrates me...
unidentified
You got me in trouble.
joe rogan
How did I get you in trouble?
dr mark gordon
You got me in trouble.
You put that picture when we had lunch together and you stood here with the brilliant Dr. Gordon.
I got a lot of shit from your people.
joe rogan
Why?
dr mark gordon
Because they said that, you know, you're a smart guy.
And I said, you're absolutely a brilliant guy.
joe rogan
Trust me, I'm a dummy.
Don't listen to those people.
They're dummies too.
If they think I'm smart, it's because they're dumber than me.
dr mark gordon
So call me dumb, please.
joe rogan
Trust me.
But what I'm saying is, for someone like me that has zero science background, what I always assume is that the way things got better and the way people figured things out is that they just looked at the facts and then when new facts came in, they adjusted accordingly.
But it seems like there's resistance against that.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
The status quo is very clearly we hand everybody this antidepressant.
We're not going to hand them this natural product that's been shown since 1986, 1958 on another large group of research to be beneficial, double-blind, washout studies for benefit and depression.
Natural product.
They don't want to use natural products because it's, in essence, as I see it, stating that, well, you don't really need the pharmaceutical.
You can just get a natural product.
joe rogan
So do you think there's just so much money involved in pushing the pharmaceutical drugs that these doctors are reluctant to go against it or not prescribe it or to step out on a limb?
dr mark gordon
Well, you know, the The medical community, the medical boards of every state, it's the standard of care in your community, which means that if there are 100 doctors in a community of physicians and the standard for 99% of them is to use SSRI,
the one doctor who uses a non-SSRI can be pulled into the medical board as practicing outside the scope of The medical community, as well as doctors in general don't want to be looked at as being that one person who is trying to introduce something new, revolutionary, something that's worked, something they worked very diligently at for 21 years to show the science and the clinical cases that it works.
It's a maverick, and our medical society doesn't work with mavericks.
It works with masks.
andrew marr
There's a lot of forces that are kind of stacked up against it, but that doesn't mean that That's a reason to cower and not stand up to it, right?
I mean, it's either right or it isn't right.
And we're saying, Dr. Gordon is right.
And we're going to fight it to our last breath to change it.
I mean, 300 million people in America are on antidepressants.
And if you're on an antidepressant and you're still depressed, guess what?
That's probably not the underlying condition.
What science has shown us is a hormonal imbalance.
We're able to interdict that and effectively treat it.
dr mark gordon
And the problem is, you know, using the term hormone.
I've been slowly getting away from the term hormone.
andrew marr
Neuroactive steroids.
dr mark gordon
That's right.
Neuroactive steroids.
joe rogan
Neuroactive steroids.
dr mark gordon
Neuroactive steroids are, we'll say, neurosteroids.
It was found in 1986 by Dr. Blue out of Belou, out of Paris, France, that the brain has the Chemistry.
To take cholesterol and to make it into testosterone, make it into pregnenolone, make it into progesterone, allopregnanolone in the brain.
For many, many years, biopsies of the brain would find testosterone in it and they thought it came from, you know, your testicles or thyroid in the brain.
It came from your thyroid gland in the neck.
What we're finding is neurosteroids are made, what we call de novo, within the brain itself.
And when you have trauma or inflammation you lose that and that's why I believe based on reading the literature and my interpretation that's what could be faulted how I interpret it is that that is the cause for all the transitions in the brain but there are receptors in the brain that regulate how nerves conduct and what they found is these nerves have not only magnesium zinc there's a valium receptor and they found a pregnenolone receptor So they found a receptor which pregnenolone
works to regulate, to smooth out, to calm you down so that you're not having panic attacks or emotional turpitude and yelling, screaming, and picking up a gun and shooting someone or throwing something or yelling or beating someone up, getting assault charges.
andrew marr
Sympathetic nervous system is just...
I've gone crazy.
dr mark gordon
The entire nervous system goes off.
joe rogan
So, in a sense, what you're saying is there's different types of testosterone, different types of hormones that are produced in different areas of the body that's not just your testicles that are doing it?
dr mark gordon
Correct.
It's the same testosterone.
You know, people talk about bioequivalent, bio...
What is it?
Bioequivalent, bioidentical hormones.
Testosterone, to be testosterone, has to be equal.
Bioequivalent.
So the brain produces the same testosterone as the testicles.
The brain produces the same pregnenolone as the cholesterol elsewhere in the body.
joe rogan
So when the brain is injured, it no longer produces it at the correct levels?
dr mark gordon
Correct.
You lose it.
In studies that are done in Alzheimer's patients, they found the frontal lobes of the brain, which regulate executive function, making sure that you make the right decision, you're able to make the coffee in the right sequence, making sure the butter's at the end, is all regulated by the frontal part of the brain, which is the most common area that is damaged in to and fro kind of auto accidents or explosions throwing you back.
They found pregnenolone and allopregnenolone deficiency, the same thing we're finding in boxers, in pugilists, in MMA, in everybody.
There's a deficiency.
And I think I shared with you, NFL did a study where they found that 19 times faster, NFL players are 19 times more prone to develop Alzheimer's disease between 30 and 50 years of age.
unidentified
Wow.
dr mark gordon
Wait a second.
30 years of age developing Alzheimer's?
joe rogan
Did you see that recent study that said 96% of all former players have CTE? 96%?
dr mark gordon
96%.
It's incredible.
Let's see.
It was...
97 out of 98 people, brains that were tested had CTE, which I guess is 96%.
Phenomenal.
And why don't they do the same testing for military as soldiers when they come back?
andrew marr
Yeah, what Dr. Gordon was saying about all the different neurosteroids, for instance, like cholesterol, he's saying, is a precursor to testosterone.
But if you take a statin drug that lowers your cholesterol, guess what the byproduct of that is?
It messes up your testosterone.
So what we're understanding is our chemistry is all linked, man.
It's all together.
You can't just treat testosterone if the stuff above it...
Is affected and you're not treating that.
Well, guess what?
The military model doesn't even test for that.
And if you're not treating things below testosterone, that that produces at that level, if it's deficient or insufficient, then you're not going to get what you need.
So until you look at your body, your chemistry as a whole, and you interdict it accordingly, you're going to continue to have these mass problems across the board, and the ones that are manifesting and With soldiers, with fighters, with football players, but you know, and then if you take these drugs and alter it, then with the civilian population as well.
So it's not just like a niche market here.
It's everybody's affected by this.
So this is what's amazing about what Dr. Gordon's doing.
It can fix a lot of things.
dr mark gordon
One of the things that has just come up on the table is looking back at the thousand-plus people that we've put on a program.
Unfortunately, we only have about 50 veterans on the program.
The rest are civilians.
What we're seeing is those that are addicted To opioids or narcotics or alcohol addiction are able to get off it rapidly.
When Matthew was on here, Matthew was on 15 different drugs.
Of that grouping, he was on 8 OxyContin a day, and I spoke to him recently specifically about this.
He was taking it for 18 months.
He was on morphine, 40 tablets.
It's either 40 or 60 milligrams per tablet, and then a fentanyl patch.
Which is a pain patch.
And in six weeks, he was off of 14 of his 15 medications.
joe rogan
A pain patch on top of all those pills?
unidentified
Correct.
dr mark gordon
He had surgery on his jaw with six pins.
He had shrapnel pulled out of his left occiput.
And he had his left leg, I think it was, shot out.
And he had chronic pain.
That's why he was on all these pain medications.
He's off all that now.
unidentified
Wow.
dr mark gordon
Because, you know, vitamin D deficiency has been found to be a cause for inflammation.
It also, low vitamin D, you have a very low pain threshold.
Increasing vitamin D improves that.
Testosterone changes how we perceive pain.
Stabilizing the pregnenolone and all those hormones in the brain changes how we perceive life.
When you're depressed, You perceive pain, very little pain, as big pain.
When you're not depressed, okay, bump yourself, it gets better.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
You know, when we were having this conversation at lunch, when we were talking about this, you were bringing up stem cells and the effect that stem cells are having and stem cell injections on people that have all sorts of serious traumatic injuries.
Is that with the brain as well?
Have they figured out how to squirt that shit into your dome?
dr mark gordon
Yeah.
In, let's see, 2012, I went to Germany, to Düsseldorf, Germany, to work for the doctors there, who was taking autologous stem cells.
He'd take out of the patient stem cells, send them to Israel to get them augmented, to increase the amount, and get them back in 48 hours.
And then this absolutely incredible three-dimensional positioning needle That used three dimensions, three axes, X, Y, and Z, and was able to go, we drilled a hole in the skull, and we put a needle in, directly into the fourth ventricle, which is that fluid compartment in the brain, and injected the stem cells, and it spread out to the brain stem, because this gentleman had A brainstem hemorrhage.
And within 48 hours to 72 hours, he started having these improvements.
Hearing improved, physical functioning.
He was in a wheelchair with a belt to hold him in place.
Three days later, he's not using a belt.
For 12 years, since he had his stroke, he wasn't able to pick up a coffee cup, a coffee mug, and hold it.
He can only use a straw.
He was picking up his coffee cup and drinking it.
So there are places around the planet that are using stem cells in people with Alzheimer's, with ALS, with traumatic brain injury, and it's getting benefits.
There are benefits.
In my projects in Beijing, China, the stem cells called mesenchymal stem cells, which are the ones that a lot of the organs come from, In diabetics, injecting one injection of 10 million mesenchymal cells into the patient through an IV, 30% of them lost their diabetes, 45% had a decrease in their insulin requirement, and 25% of them didn't have any effect.
joe rogan
Wow.
dr mark gordon
And this is a center with 26 MD PhDs in Beijing that tops in their field.
joe rogan
So there's a lot of hope in that as well.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
joe rogan
Yeah, that seems like something that would, if you're injecting it, especially directly into the traumatic, the area that's experienced trauma.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, there's an orthopedic buddy of mine, Centaro, who was using autologous stem cells that he'd pull out a patient and inject it into the knees and get rebuilt of the knees without needing surgery.
joe rogan
Well, that's what I'm hearing, too, is about rebuilding cartilage, that people have had bone-on-bone cartilage, they're rebuilding it.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
There are a couple of protocols.
There was one by Dr. Alan R. Dunn out of Miami, an orthopedic surgeon, who showed that if you go in with an arthroscopic scope and you use a burr, which is like a Sandpaper device and you rub the bone and then inject it with growth hormone, that he was able to get 5 to 10 millimeters of regeneration of cartilage.
In our office we use prolotherapy.
That's huge.
Significant.
And he did a Harvard study.
His publication came at Harvard.
He patented the protocol.
unidentified
10 millimeters?
joe rogan
That's thick.
dr mark gordon
10 millimeters.
joe rogan
That's incredible.
dr mark gordon
Not 10 centimeters, 10 millimeters, 25. Still, that's a pad.
Yeah, it's a nice thickness that developed.
So, but no one's doing that because it's illegal to use growth hormone in that fashion.
Growth hormone has a very restricted use parameters on it.
joe rogan
Why is that?
Is it like baseball players and shit?
dr mark gordon
Well, I think that had a lot to do with it.
joe rogan
Public impressions of it?
dr mark gordon
This stuff works.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dr mark gordon
It works phenomenally well.
joe rogan
That's so frustrating to me when something that's really, really effective gets illegal because athletes are using it and becoming more effective.
It's so silly.
andrew marr
It's a complete misconception and it's ludicrous.
dr mark gordon
If the true altruistic goal in medicine is to fix people, Then why are we being restricted and using the things that we see fixing people?
joe rogan
Well, the stem cell stuff was...
Everybody was always worried that people were going to get it from fetuses and then somehow it was going to encourage abortions until they figured out how to get it from other means.
And once they figured out how to get it from other...
Now that debate's off the table.
But for the longest time, that was the big issue.
During the Bush administration, they held back stem cell research because of the right-wing Christians.
dr mark gordon
I think there's...
andrew marr
Preposterous.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, it's so fucking crazy.
andrew marr
Single cell.
We're talking about a single cell here.
dr mark gordon
Single cell.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dr mark gordon
I think it's, what, 10 years that they put the moratorium on doing any research in stem cells, which is giving Switzerland, is giving China, is giving Russia...
joe rogan
Massive advantage.
andrew marr
To be diagnosed clinically as dead, you have to be brain dead.
So if there's not even a brain in there, how can you say that taking a single cell?
I mean, picking your nose is going to kill more single cells than doing that for stem cell research.
Quit killing your single cells.
But the repercussion of that is a game changer for everything.
joe rogan
Yeah, you know, I used to think of stem cells as, wow, that's kind of interesting.
Some future therapy, that's going to be cool.
Until I got it shot into my shoulder.
Then I'm like, holy fuck!
Like, this is nuts!
Like, this shoulder that's bothering me for a year, not bothering me at all anymore.
andrew marr
How quick turnaround was that?
joe rogan
A couple weeks.
andrew marr
Wow.
joe rogan
Within a couple weeks it started feeling great.
Now it's two months out.
Now it's been two months out.
I don't have any pain.
dr mark gordon
PRP or stem cells?
joe rogan
Stem cells.
dr mark gordon
Where'd they get the stem cells?
joe rogan
Placenta.
dr mark gordon
Oh, placenta.
They have a technique which is PRP, which is platelet-rich Platelet-rich plasma, which is similar to...
Right, it gets a buffy coat.
joe rogan
Well, it's similar to a Regenicane, right?
Except that they don't...
Regenicane is that stuff that Dr. Peter Welling figured out in Germany.
That's the blood-spinning procedure.
They heat up the blood.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, this is...
joe rogan
It's like a more advanced version of platelet-rich plasma.
dr mark gordon
And what they do in, I think it was Australia, they expose it to a special frequency of ultraviolet light to take care of any of the inflammatory chemistry that's in there through photo deactivation.
And the PRP works very well.
It's something that's more acceptable than doing autologous stem cell.
andrew marr
There's a number of ways to do it, though, is the point.
There's a number of different ways to get stem cells.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, a lot of UFC fighters are getting it now, and what they're doing, a good percentage of them, they get their fat sucked out of their body.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, adipose.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then they're turning that into stem cells, then shooting it into their knees and their shoulders and what have you, and having incredible results.
A lot of MMA fighters, a lot of grapplers are doing it.
andrew marr
I need to get that done.
joe rogan
Yeah, dude, I'm telling you, man, I... I mean, I don't know if mine's an isolated incident, but I'm just so blown away.
I was on the verge of surgery.
I was thinking, okay, I'll be out for three months.
I'll be in a sling for eight weeks.
I was going over my head.
How much downtime?
What could I do during that downtime?
I was preparing to have a useless shoulder.
Now, all of a sudden, I'm doing everything.
I mean, with zero pain.
It just makes some weird noises still.
It's kind of crunchy.
But there's no pain and no restriction in movement.
There's no impingements.
Jerking off is no problem.
andrew marr
I have a non-union in my left fibula, so it's broken, and I would love to do that.
joe rogan
A non-union in your fibula.
Fibula is a small bone.
andrew marr
I cracked that once.
A non-weight-bearing bone.
I have a titanium plate, and it got broken two pieces on my first deployment.
And I just never had it fixed.
joe rogan
So the plate's broken too?
andrew marr
Yeah, the plate's broken.
And so they wanted to fix it, but it was like a nine-month rehab.
And I was like, no way.
joe rogan
Nine months?
andrew marr
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
But it doesn't work now, right?
unidentified
Right.
andrew marr
So they would take the titanium plate out, re-graph it, have to graph it, take stuff from my hip, apparently.
And I was just like, it's not worth it.
I'm just going to keep on keeping on.
And then I found out about stem cells, and I'm just going to wait until I can do that.
I'll be back next week.
joe rogan
And can the stem cells fix that?
dr mark gordon
They can help with bones that are, if they're close enough, help with non-union.
Fusion, help with fusion.
andrew marr
Well, yeah, it could help regenerate and then speed up the therapy time, the turnaround time until you're well again.
So if it's nine months now, maybe it's three months.
I mean, that to me is a win.
joe rogan
It's just so frustrating when you hear about how much time they spent Banning stem cell research because of the new research they're doing now on regenerating things I mean they've just they've sequenced the gene of the flat worm and they think they're gonna be able to figure out within you know X amount of years how to regenerate limbs like what the fuck man I mean that we're getting into some really crazy area with innovative science and medicine so what do we do we stop using all the technology that can help people today waiting for the
dr mark gordon
technology of Decade from now.
joe rogan
Well, that's even sillier.
Definitely don't think you should see that.
It's so fascinating.
andrew marr
No reasons being applied is a problem.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, it seems to me that stem cells would be a really good one for people with traumatic brain injury.
What do you think about that?
dr mark gordon
No, I think stem cells is a good option.
But what is it that you're looking at?
You're looking at someone who has had a loss of a segment of their brain.
You want to try and regenerate it.
Is that possible?
We know from studies that were done back in 1911. There was Dr. Cajal, 1928. There's a doc up in McGill University, a guru, Arturo Aguro, who does regenerative research.
The only reason why nerves can't regenerate is because they're in a non-permissive environment, is what I call it, in the lecture I give on this specific topic.
Is that there are so many chemicals in the brain that are trying to foster regeneration of nerve.
Like for instance, UCLA is doing a study on a byproduct of progesterone called allopregnanolone, which is neuro-regenerative, A synaptogenic, which means that the connection from one nerve to another nerve is a synapse.
If it's damaged, it can regenerate it.
Also, allopregnanolone is a free radical scavenger.
As we age, as our biochemistry changes and the energy production in our brain through mitochondria changes, a lot more of oxidation occurs, or free radicals, and that's called oxidative stress.
And it's believed, especially in great articles by a gentleman at USC, Caleb Finch, talks about aging of the brain and loss of our functioning due to this oxidative stress.
And he believes that oxidative stress leads to hormone deficiency, leads to physical deficiency and death.
A recent group of articles showed we're seeing a lot of a type of diabetes called insulin-resistant diabetes where you're making too much insulin because it's not being recognized by the cells.
So they found in these group of articles came out that if there's inflammation of an area of the brain called the hypothalamus which regulates our energy use that it could predispose you to developing this situation called insulin-resistant diabetes or the metabolic syndrome.
So we've been tracking our patient population who have had significant head trauma, whether or not it's blast with physical injury or blunt head injury, someone who fell off a second story and hit their head, was unconscious for a month.
They're developed, they've developed or they came into the office already with this insulin resistance and it's easy to fix.
Correct their hormones, give them chromate.
joe rogan
What's chromate?
dr mark gordon
Chromate is a mineral, a metal, which is important for insulin recognition at the cell wall.
And it was called by C. Everett Koop the insulin-tolerant factor back in the late 90s.
So this chromium hooked up to a niacin called chromium polynicotinate.
Its trade name is called chromate.
We use it for our patients with this type 2 diabetes called insulin resistance, and they all reverse.
They all get better.
Their blood sugar's stabilized, their fats get better, and their insulin comes down.
So we had, in fact, one of our neighbors had an insulin level 117. It should be less than 25. Once we corrected his testosterone and his chromium, his levels dropped down below 30, which is where you'd like to have it.
joe rogan
You know, I was listening to this Radiolab podcast recently, and they were talking about lithium.
There's a woman who takes lithium because she's, I guess it's bipolar.
dr mark gordon
Bipolar.
joe rogan
And I didn't know lithium is just a salt.
dr mark gordon
Lithium chloride or yeah sodium.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just it's just an element and she takes this and she's fine.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, I haven't looked at it, but there are people you can buy it over the counter now, but lithium you can buy over the counter and it I haven't for what?
That's what I need to go learn Lithium.
joe rogan
Yeah, because it seems like, for me, ignorantly, when I heard that, I was like, well, I thought lithium was some hardcore Prozac-type drug that, you know, they put people on when they're out of their fucking mind.
I didn't think it was just assault.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, it's mental.
andrew marr
Was it beneficial, Dr. Gordon, or can that be used to...
dr mark gordon
No, it was beneficial.
Starting to...
What started it was I would see patients coming in with bipolar and being on lithium and then started seeing patients who were coming in on it, you know, just taking it because of articles in Life Extension Magazine or one of those other science-based journals or magazines.
But I haven't had a chance to go and look at it closely.
unidentified
But...
dr mark gordon
It's very impressive.
It's the metals, you know.
It's like magnesium works on one of the brain receptors that if you take magnesium, it'll make you calm.
Magnesium, metal.
You're talking about a salt, magnesium, carbonate, magnesium.
joe rogan
Well, zinc makes your testosterone go up, right?
dr mark gordon
Correct.
Zinc's involved in 300 processes in the body.
It's antiviral, anti-cancer, and it's anti-Alzheimer's.
And 300 processes in the body.
One of them is a natural aromatase inhibitor.
So I've never used arimidex in my practice or anastrosol in my practice.
joe rogan
What does that mean, aromatase inhibitor?
dr mark gordon
Aromatase.
Well, testosterone converts to estradiol naturally.
The body adapts to what we do to it.
If you give an overwhelming amount of testosterone to the body, the body says, oh, now what am I going to do with this?
So it'll either send it down to estrogen, estradiol, or it'll send it to another thing called dihydrotestosterone.
Estradiol, obviously, you get man boobs, you get, you know, crying, wimping, and so forth.
And DHT causes hair loss, causes testicles to shimmy.
joe rogan
I like how you looked at my head when you said that.
You sat up?
dr mark gordon
My back.
So, there are side effects.
So, in replenishing testosterone, you have to be careful with the balance you use.
Otherwise, you start throwing things in like anastrosol, which blocks estradiol, which is extremely important for generating growth hormone in the brain, helping blood flow, and keeping the immune system unique to the brain functional.
So, you know, everything we do, there's always a risk-to-benefit factor that needs to be looked at, and I think that some of the risk factors are being ignored.
joe rogan
This woman in this Radiolab podcast, she was having an issue with kidney failure, and they were going to make her get off of the lithium.
So lithium has a negative effect?
dr mark gordon
It has toxicity, and it's dose-dependent toxicity, and then the uniqueness of a person's biochemistry can make a very low amount toxic for you, where another person, it's meaningless.
joe rogan
So for this woman, it was this massive conflict because this stuff was saving her.
I mean, it allowed her to be herself, and now all of a sudden they were telling her, you're going to have to get off of it, and she had been off of it before and just lost her marbles.
andrew marr
Saving her and killing her at the same time, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's crazy.
Is there another way that people can avoid that?
Is there another way that they can avoid the effects of being bipolar, exercise, diet, anything?
dr mark gordon
Well, do you want to say anything about that, Andrew?
andrew marr
We think that you can treat that by treating the neuroactive steroids in the brain.
And it's been shown that It's been backed up by evidence and proof in his clinical application as well that that's very much the case.
joe rogan
So how's that work?
dr mark gordon
Testosterone is generally perceived as being a sex hormone or being a reproductive hormone.
What we're finding is that it's involved in an incredible array of different processes in the body.
Studies on the The emotional center of the brain, the limbic system, found that it helps to stabilize panic and also anger and aggression and reactiveness to our environment.
If it's low, you're hyperreactive.
They're finding that in anorexia nervosa.
Women who are, you know, starving themselves, who have psychological issues to it, if they don't respond to treatment, giving them testosterone improves it.
So what we're starting to see is these neurosteroids and neuroactive steroids have influence on an array of psychological or mood disorders.
And one of them is in bipolar, in the case that we're Just touching on a gentleman who was diagnosed with bipolar by the military and was put onto lithium and also ADD at the same time.
And then what happened was he was given a challenge test with a low dose of testosterone and within 32 hours or so, his symptoms disappeared.
joe rogan
That's incredible.
The combination of things working together synergistically is one of the most incredible parts of it.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
joe rogan
And this is something that it just seems that a lot of people are just simply not aware of.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
The analogy that I use is, you know, brand new Corvettes are absolute bitchin' cars.
And it's like having a Corvette with four flat tires.
Now all we're going to do is we're going to fill up one of the tires with air and you're going to try and drive the car.
You're not going to be able to drive the car.
Let's fill up the front two tires and drive.
Okay, let's go and fill up three and a half tires and you're going to drive.
It's not going to happen.
The synergy is in all the hormones that we have in our body, all the chemistry.
Work together to give us a level of benefit of function that one by itself cannot do.
And if you look at the failure reports that are in traumatic brain injury since 1959, it's called a futility failure where these big pharmaceutical companies took these great drugs and gave one product to an individual with traumatic brain injury and they didn't get any benefit greater than 10%.
That's called failure or futility failure.
And it's because, and other people are writing, the because is because our system is so complex.
How do you expect one product to fix it?
It can't.
joe rogan
Everything's got to be balanced.
dr mark gordon
It's all got to be balanced.
joe rogan
There's such an issue in this country when it comes to mental health, that mental health doesn't get looked at like the health of a bone or the health of a muscle.
If you have a torn muscle, you have to get an emergency operation to reattach it.
But if your brain is fucked, it's like, come on, don't be a pussy.
Toughen up or stop being so down on yourself.
andrew marr
We're the sum of our chemistry.
I mean, that's the deal.
And when that's affected, that's when you have these different things that manifest.
dr mark gordon
And that's why we're seeing so many of the vets coming back and committing suicide because they've been instilled with exactly what you said.
Don't be a pussy.
Man up and do it.
andrew marr
And that's why it was easy for me to say, well, I can speak to my credibility that that's not the case.
So let's find some damn answers because I'm falling off the crazy train.
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
Yeah, for a guy like you, that's where it's so clear.
It's like, you know you're not a pussy, so what the hell's going on?
andrew marr
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Whereas people that have self-doubt, it's like, well, maybe I just can't.
andrew marr
Right, well, maybe they're right, and maybe what the psychologist says is right.
Maybe I should take this medication, and now that's compounding a problem and making it even bigger.
And that's why we're having these suicides.
joe rogan
And also, you know, one of the things that's been fascinating to me over the last couple years is finding out all the different things that we do that change the hormone levels of our body.
Like all the different things you could do during the day that up your testosterone, including like just what they call peacocking.
Driving a nice car around a bunch of young ladies actually raises your testosterone.
Like, what the fuck is going on with our bodies?
Like, how weird is it that there's, like, moods, the changing in mood, like, happy moments, like, literally will change the chemical makeup.
andrew marr
It's the evolution of man, you know what I mean?
And that was a natural selection that, when women were round, I was gonna, you know, you're gonna perk up.
Gotta get ready to party.
dr mark gordon
Gotta get ready to party.
When a woman ovulates at day 14, 15, 16, there's a spike in testosterone.
So she's ovulating.
She has a spike in her testosterone.
What does she want to do?
joe rogan
Get her party on.
dr mark gordon
Get a party on.
She wants to get that fertilization dance going.
andrew marr
Fertilization dance.
joe rogan
Doesn't that happen?
That happens also to a lot of women that get older.
When they put them on hormone replacement, once they experience menopause, they have more testosterone.
They get hornier.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
If you just follow aging of men and women, as men who are testosterone-based age, they lose their testosterone and they have more estrogen.
That's why we become pussies as we get older.
Women, on the other hand, lose their estrogen and gain more testosterone.
That's why you start seeing facial hair and they start taking the command position in the relationship as they get older.
And it's this flipping of the hormones.
andrew marr
Hey, Dr. Gordon, I wanted to touch on the, and Joe, you asked about it, the able to regrow anything in the brain.
It's called neuroplasticity, you know, right, Dr. Gordon?
And I wanted to dumb it down for the listeners or guys that maybe are like me that are listening.
Are we able to fix our brains?
And science has said yes.
And I found this out before I met Dr. Gordon and I was hearing about some of these things and treatments I was at about neuroplasticity and basically being able to regenerate the neuronal pathways, okay?
So we have shearing of the neurons in a traumatic brain injury.
And that causes some of the issues that we have.
But what we now know is we can form new neuronal pathways in the brain.
And we can stimulate that through a number of ways.
Learning something that you've never learned will stimulate that.
Treating it with what you're deficient in, you know, neurosteroid-wise.
We'll fix that.
So we thought, like, can you teach an old dog new tricks?
We thought the answer was no, but now we know that that's not correct.
We can regenerate neuronal pathways in the brain.
Anybody can do it, and you can keep yourself, you can continue to get sharper as your age through these treatments.
joe rogan
I think people get sharper, too, when they try new things.
andrew marr
Absolutely.
And that's part of the science behind, okay, well, that builds new neural pathways.
And we didn't think that that was possible.
I don't know how long we just figured that out.
But when I heard that two years ago and people were telling me, hey, this is the new you, just accept it.
And I was like, well, this is the last class I was in.
He told me about neuroplasticity.
So which one is it?
You either can regenerate and renew or you can't.
dr mark gordon
I think it was Fort Collins and a Dr. Twili who was doing just that, introducing to vets who had dramatic brain injury with Nintendo with certain type of gains to get the visual manual dexterity which would help to improve their cognitive ability because of doing just that, using learning something new.
What's that thing called?
Sudoku?
Sudoku?
Yeah.
andrew marr
Sudoku.
dr mark gordon
Sudoku, which forces you to do intense thinking, which can help build new pathways.
In literature that I used to read in Alzheimer's, I have a lecture on it, they found that if you looked at the academic The academic experience of an individual when they get Alzheimer's, the people who have the highest academic achievements, meaning MDs, PhDs, and so forth, compared to people who just have a high school diploma, that those people with a higher education have a slower progression of Alzheimer's disease.
And that's because they've built parallel pathways, a lot of pathways.
So if you lose this pathway, you've got this one as an alternate backdoor or backup system.
andrew marr
Side door, yeah.
dr mark gordon
So, you know...
joe rogan
But it also makes sense in relation to exercise.
Like, the more exercise...
I mean, when people don't exercise, they experience atrophy.
dr mark gordon
Right.
joe rogan
When, you know, when your life has the exact same path every day, the exact same stimuli, nothing varies.
When that happens, it's very easy for your mind to just atrophy.
unidentified
Correct.
andrew marr
If you don't challenge yourself in life, then you're going to atrophy in every area.
So that's the onus on the individual, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Yeah, and that's also why people that are sort of adrenaline junkies, they kind of ramp it up all the time, more and more and more, until the other people around them are like, you're fucking getting a little crazy here, buddy.
But it's because it takes more for them to get that juice.
They don't get it from the original thing.
andrew marr
Their baseline is pushed higher above the average line.
dr mark gordon
You know, I have patients who get onto a program, and after four or six months they say, Doc, I don't feel...
The same as I did at the beginning.
I said, well, at the beginning you were at zero, now you're at 100. We're at the top.
unidentified
Right.
dr mark gordon
What more, you've already had that contrast from zero to 100. And the analogy I use is, you know, it's 100 degrees outside and you've got a pool that's 86 degrees.
When you jump into the pool, it's initially cold.
And then your body adapts and you don't feel that temperature difference.
Is the temperature any different?
No, it's the same thing.
You've adapted.
So what happens is we adapt.
To not feeling the contrast because there's no contrast.
You're already at the top.
Does that make any sense?
joe rogan
Yeah, it totally makes sense.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, so this is what people have to understand.
And, you know, every week I get one or two patients, you know, call up and say, Doc, I just don't feel as good as I did in the beginning.
Have you changed?
Have you dropped in your functionality?
No, in fact, I'm going to be running a, you know, a marathon.
Well, were you able to do that last time?
No, I'm not.
Now I'm in the gym six days a week instead of once a week or once a month.
I said, your entire lifestyle is updated, but you're not feeling as good?
And I just can't get a full understanding.
Their level of function is up here, but they're telling me that they're not doing as well.
joe rogan
Is it just because they're used to it?
Is that what it is?
dr mark gordon
Yeah.
joe rogan
The massive improvement they had in the beginning was like this new state.
Almost like getting water in your ear.
And then the water comes out.
dr mark gordon
It's a contrast.
Hormones always give the body a contrast between low level and higher level.
Not excessive, but higher level.
And you adapt to it.
You know, what happens with heroin addicts?
It's a bad example.
But the same thing.
They get what's called tachyphylaxis.
They don't feel the same high.
Everybody chases that first high.
And you're never going to have that first high.
Because that was the first time that you just whacked all your neurons in your brain with this new drug, you know, heroin.
joe rogan
Yeah, chasing the dragon, right?
dr mark gordon
Chasing the dragon, correct.
joe rogan
Well, it makes sense.
I mean, when something is unique in the beginning and special and fantastic, it gives you this, whoa!
But then when that's a normal thing, then you go, ah, just, you know, it worked for me in the beginning, and then it stopped working for me.
dr mark gordon
It hasn't changed.
And you'd show them their blood levels.
Their blood levels, like I had a, in fact, it was, I think it was Jordan, Who was very, very low in testosterone.
I think it was like a 2 when it should be a 14. And his total was like 220 and should be about 700. And he complains that he's not feeling as well.
We did his blood work and his free testosterone was like 14, 13.99.
And his total was 801. So he's like four times above where he was before.
And he's saying he doesn't feel any better.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
So he just got used to this elevated state.
unidentified
Correct.
dr mark gordon
He's functioning at a higher level.
You know, I've been on treatment.
joe rogan
That's what happens to rich people, too, right?
dr mark gordon
Is that right?
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what they said.
andrew marr
I haven't been there yet.
You start to crave different things, right?
But the problem with that is we lose focus and the clarity of the present moment.
That's the problem, man.
I crave a different emotion when you need to be experiencing the emotion that you're having right now.
Living in that.
joe rogan
Isn't that part of what the problem of being a fucking person is?
Because we're always striving for the new thing.
We're always striving for improvement.
We always want a better time on our run.
We always want a better this, a better that, the newest car, the fucking update to the house.
All that shit.
We're constantly...
No one is ever like, hey, it's pretty good.
dr mark gordon
Isn't that apathy?
andrew marr
I think it's chasing certain emotions and trying to run away from other ones when there's opportunity for growth and development and ultimately contribution in all of them.
And they all can produce that if you're able to, instead of run from it, maybe look at it and see what that can provide you.
And what can you do to provide that to somebody else?
joe rogan
Yeah, it makes sense.
Totally makes sense.
It just seems to me that the way you approach life and the philosophy that you have that you take through life can either contribute or take away from your happiness.
And that it's all these things.
It's not just the hormonal balance, it's not just the health of the physical body, but it's also the approach that you have to life.
The way you look at things can sort of affect and balance all that stuff out in a way.
I mean, you need everything.
You need the big picture.
andrew marr
Absolutely.
I think if you wrap your happiness around passion or pleasure, those are fleeting.
You know what I mean?
So if you can instead wrap it around purpose or meaning, then you're going to be a long-term happy.
But pleasure, passion, things like that, that's short term.
People chasing pleasure, man, and that doesn't make you happy in the end.
joe rogan
No, you know, my friend Steve Rinello has a really funny way of, uh, he talks about things that are really fun when you're doing them, and then things that are really fun after they're done.
He's like, some things are really fun while you're doing them, but after they're done, they don't give you any, like a roller coaster.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
A roller coaster doesn't give you anything after it's over.
But, like, there's some miserable trips that you go on, well, afterwards you'll spend hours and hours laughing with your friends, like, dude, that sucks so hard!
andrew marr
Absolutely.
joe rogan
And you'd be laughing about how fucking cold you were, and you're camping, and you're freezing your dick off.
Excuse me while I blow my nose.
andrew marr
Remembering a perceived negative time and putting a positive light on it, you know what I mean?
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's also understanding that a lot of like what is good is very difficult to do and it becomes like your goal setting and then achieving those goals becomes this this feeling of pleasure and a good thing.
Whereas opposed to so many people just want comfort and quiet and peace, but with none of the hard work and that you don't appreciate it then.
andrew marr
Absolutely.
joe rogan
You're like a spoiled child.
Like, spoiled kids don't appreciate what they have in their life.
Someone who works really hard and, you know, they've gone through hard times, then when things turn well, they're like, God, this is so good to not have to worry about money now, to not have to worry about where my next meal's coming from, to have a nice home and, you know, a nice bed to sleep in.
dr mark gordon
If you look at the Richard Branson's and the Job's and so forth, they came from nothing and they built something.
They worked.
They were hungry and developed something or had a world that was fulfilled everything that they could think of.
They had the desire to achieve that goal as opposed to people who are given everything on a silver platter.
They don't have aspirations.
They don't have the drive.
andrew marr
I think you achieve that goal, that is kind of a pleasure you're talking about, Joe, but like when you look back and look at the journey that it took from where you started to get to that goal, that's where you can feel purposeful and proud of it.
That lasts longer than the feeling of accomplishing that goal, the journey.
joe rogan
What a weird world we live in, isn't it?
Trying to manage all this stuff and trying to figure out what's the most, what's the optimum way to get through life?
What's the best way to approach it?
How much emphasis to put on the mind?
How much emphasis to put on the body?
The relationships that you have with the people in your life greatly affect how you feel about life.
The people in your life, they can affect your hormones.
They can affect your hormone levels, they can affect your cortisol levels, they can affect all those things.
dr mark gordon
Someone said that, I talk a lot and I tell them that because of having four women at home, three daughters and the wife, that the opportunity that I have to speak is always outside.
Because inside the house, you know...
joe rogan
You just listen.
dr mark gordon
I just listen.
joe rogan
Just try to sort out these aliens that you live with and all their...
andrew marr
Especially if I matched you.
I got three daughters and a wife, too.
joe rogan
I got the same package.
andrew marr
Yeah, I also got two boys.
We'll commiserate later.
joe rogan
Oh, you got a full house.
You got chaos in your house, sir.
andrew marr
Yeah, yeah.
That's how we live.
unidentified
That's chaos.
andrew marr
Like I said, in feces, urine, and poop nonstop.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dr mark gordon
But as they get older, they mature into this delight as my daughter over there and the other two daughters that aren't here.
Just a delight.
And that journey you were talking about and the effect of the environment on your psychological well-being, you know, it's a roller coaster.
I've gone through a roller coaster with each one of the daughters and I've come to that landing.
You know, where you get off the roller coaster finally at this age and you look back and you start laughing on some of the silly things that happen.
And my daughter came to me a couple of weeks ago and basically, you know, said, yeah, we went through some silly time.
Let's have some great time.
And it was one of the most revelating kind of nights I could have had.
It was the best night and going out and having a good, you know, 40 year old scotch or something.
But you owe me that.
andrew marr
This last year, I read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and it just changed my outlook on everything, and he went through the Holocaust, and basically the book was the premise of some people survive the Holocaust.
joe rogan
Is that like the Holocaust?
andrew marr
That's a Texan in me.
dr mark gordon
The Holocaust.
andrew marr
Some people survived it, right, and were able to have meaning while others just gave up and died.
And what was the reasoning behind that was kind of how the book looked at it.
And it was the people who survived, like 9%, The commonality was everybody had some kind of a meaning, right?
Some kind of purpose outside of themselves that was wrapped in how they could better somebody else's life in some form or fashion.
And that purpose, that meaning to their life allowed them to be able to endure whatever came their way because they had a purpose to endure it.
The person that didn't have a meaning put on their life for whatever reason Just at the end, that was too much.
They just gave in and said, I give up, and eventually died.
And that was the difference.
You know what I mean?
And we can replicate that in our own life.
You can wrap your life around meaning and purpose and tie that to how you can contribute to put value into somebody else's life.
I found that puts value into you.
You know what I mean?
So I think the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.
joe rogan
That's a very good way of putting it and it makes you feel better about your life, too And like cynical people will say well there is no purpose in the end You know you're gonna take a dirt nap and that's all the time that you have here is just bullshit But the reality is that bullshit is way better when you believe that you have a purpose And when you live for a purpose and when you work hard and you achieve things like goal setting They say that one of the most important things for people to achieve happiness is the setting and achieving of goals It's setting and achieving of goals,
whether it's simple, like completing a project.
I want to start a garden in my yard.
You know, you want to put up posts and grow plants, and then when you eat a salad from those plants, you go, I fucking did it.
Like, you get a feeling, a natural feeling of accomplishment from an art project, from anything you want to do.
Fixing the shed whatever it is like when you set a goal and you do your best and you achieve That's part of what made human beings what we are today in 2015 those those natural word systems are in our DNA And if you you follow those and you live by those you will have a more fulfilled life a happier life I agree.
andrew marr
I agree.
dr mark gordon
And it's a fulfillment.
It's a joy that you get that you don't need anybody else to say to you, good job.
Because it's self-generated.
It's your own self-reward.
As opposed to people who search for someone else to tap on the back.
You know, people come up to me and...
I'm very sensitive about the fact that people say, what a great job I'm doing in whatever I'm doing.
I know I'm doing a good job because that's my purpose.
That's my purpose.
I don't need to have someone to tell me to, you know, I've been doing a good job.
joe rogan
You're not a slacker.
andrew marr
If you weren't doing your best, you'd be going against yourself, right?
So you don't need anybody.
dr mark gordon
I'm very hypercritical about myself because, you know...
You look around the planet, how many people are putting in the effort for helping other people?
andrew marr
Right.
dr mark gordon
I mean, really, truly helping without, you know, helping.
Not that I do 100% because I'm selfish.
I need to have my stotch and my car and whatever else.
andrew marr
Trying to improve well-being, right?
unidentified
Improve well-being across the board.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's really no good manual on how to live life.
And even if there was, it might not apply to you.
You know, I mean, nobody could tell you, like, what's going to make one person happy is not necessarily going to make another person happy.
You know, we're here talking about goal setting and working hard.
For some people, that's actually not it.
For some people, what do they want to do?
They just want to have a good group of friends and be around them and have nice meals and good conversations, and that's it.
They literally don't have a desire for these other things.
But for people like you that have this burning desire to know things and improve upon things and to do good work, for you, that's your path.
dr mark gordon
That's it.
andrew marr
I think simple is to get so wrapped up in the day-to-day rat race of life that they don't put their head up and say, man, I... I'm totally missing the boat, man.
There is no meaning.
There is no purpose to how I'm doing anything.
I would think people really thought about it.
They might not do what Joe Rogan wants to do or what Mark Gordon wants to do, but they're like, hey, I want to do something.
If it's not just tied around totally...
I just want to hang out and not give anything out to anybody.
You're not going to get anything in return.
I don't think anybody wants to do that in their right mind.
joe rogan
It's just so hard for people to find out what it is that they want to do and then how do I go about pursuing that and how do I go about pursuing that while avoiding the idea of choosing just a job that's going to give you security.
You know, a job that you don't want to do, but hey, you know, it's going to give me dental.
That's a big factor in a lot of people's lives.
The non-pursuing of dreams.
That somehow or another, these dreams are dangerous.
andrew marr
You've got to go after it with no fear of failure.
Don't even let failure enter into the equation.
What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail at it?
That's what I would tell people to do.
That's what I tell my kids.
Whatever you're passionate about, that's where you need to start.
You know what I mean?
That's where you need to go.
joe rogan
And guess what?
andrew marr
Not because of a dental program.
joe rogan
You're going to have Failure.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
Failure is important for growth and learning.
You know, I have it all the time.
It's good.
It's like a vitamin.
You gotta take it.
Fuel yourself with the fuck-ups.
That's what I always say.
dr mark gordon
Talking about, you know, failure, one of the stories I keep on...
What I'm repeating and using as a goal for myself is, there was a PUP reporter that interviewed Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, before he passed away.
And he said to him, you know, Mr. Edison, your development of the incandescent bulb was what revolutionized.
It took us from the stone ages to modern living.
And, you know, but how do you feel about these over 1108 failures that you had with the bulbs?
Thomas Edison says, well, Sonny, I don't look at them as being failures, just as things that didn't work.
And it's by having that attitude of looking at what we do in our daily life as not failures, meaning that you're worthless and you're incapable and therefore you should stop what you're doing, but looking at it as just something that didn't work, Find another pathway.
joe rogan
That's a great Thomas Edison impression, by the way.
dr mark gordon
Oh, thank you very much.
andrew marr
He's a Southern.
joe rogan
When did he become from Alabama?
dr mark gordon
Where was he from?
Well, sunny?
Ohio?
joe rogan
Well, not only that, he ripped off Tesla.
I mean, that was really how he got ahead.
That guy was just ripping off Tesla.
andrew marr
He hated alternate current.
joe rogan
Yeah, electrocuting fucking elephants and shit.
dr mark gordon
DC. Remember that?
joe rogan
He electrocuted that elephant?
andrew marr
Yeah, it's all about direct current.
joe rogan
Yeah, he fucked up.
That guy's a dumbass.
He was just lucky there was a super genius around that he could steal from.
Well, I'm sure he was smart.
Don't get me wrong, but it kind of helped being around Tesla.
I mean, that's that Michael Jordan commercial, you know, about how many times he failed.
He failed over and over and over again, and that's why he succeeded.
andrew marr
Yeah, like you said, man, that spurs growth.
You know, you have to be able to fail.
I look at it as data, you know what I mean?
That gives me readings about where I was and how I need to self-correct the course I'm at.
Without it, you can't get a good true measurement.
joe rogan
And that feeling that you get from failure is awesome.
It sucks at the time, but it's like we were talking about things that are fun while you're doing them, and then things that are great years later.
When you fail at something, that feeling that you have afterwards is fucking horrible.
But that feeling will fuel you.
That feeling will get you to avoid that.
That's what it's there for.
But you have to rearrange the way you look at it.
People look at it like, oh, I'm a failure.
You can't define yourself by mistakes.
Who you are, you are the thinking thing.
You are the thing that can figure out what the problem is, how to form a solution.
You're not the results.
Like, you're not the failures.
And that's what a lot of people run into.
They define themselves by failures.
And people try to define you by failures.
Sure.
Like, how many times you run into someone from high...
Remember that time when you were in high school, you did this and that?
Like, hey, dickhead, that was 20 years ago.
You're still living there.
You know, I learned from that, and I moved past it.
That happens with a lot of people, right?
That people will try to drag you into.
Like, I had a friend of mine who...
He had to get a...
He had a breakup with this girl, because he was dating her, and they would talk about things, they would have a disagreement about something that she did, and she would bring up something that happened, like, fucking two years ago, that had nothing to do with it.
unidentified
Like, you did that, you did that, and then you said that, he's like, that was two fucking years ago, what are you talking about?
joe rogan
That has no bearing on who we are right now.
unidentified
None.
joe rogan
Zero.
andrew marr
She's not being rational.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
She was trying to define him by an argument that they had, you know, two years ago.
dr mark gordon
I can't comment.
joe rogan
But you know what I mean?
dr mark gordon
I know what you mean.
unidentified
I can't comment.
joe rogan
But when people are doing that, they're trying to define someone based on a failure.
andrew marr
As a team guy, man, anybody, the guy I want on my team is a guy who's failed and failed and failed.
And every time he got back up and he said, I don't give a shit.
I'm going to keep going.
Because I know when both start flying and the day gets tough, We're gonna keep moving.
Show me somebody who's never failed or has won every time, and as soon as they have a perceived adversity or difficult situation, they don't know how to act.
I don't want that guy on my team, especially when it's life and death.
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
That's a big issue with fighters.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
With fighters, it's a giant issue.
It's called being a frontrunner.
And there's some guys that just, they don't do well when they're the nail.
They're great when they're the hammer.
But when all of a sudden they're the nail, they don't know what the fuck to do and they fall apart.
There's certain guys that, if they're dominating a fight, they're the most terrifying fighter in the world.
But the moment things start going their way, you start seeing cracks in their armor, you start seeing mental weaknesses, and they fold.
And they perform at a drastically reduced level.
dr mark gordon
With no reason.
joe rogan
Well, the reason is psychological.
All of a sudden they're confronting adversity.
They don't know what to do.
When you see a fighter that's capable of being hurt and on the brink of failure and then coming back and winning a fight, then you see a person with character.
And then there's other people that they're great when everything's going their way, but the moment things aren't going their way, they just fucking pack up their bag and go home.
andrew marr
That's what I love to watch is the guy that those fights where the guy was down and he didn't stop.
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
You learn a lot about guys.
andrew marr
You learn about their character.
That's where you learn about somebody's character.
joe rogan
There's this kid that fights in the UFC right now.
His name is Thomas Almeida.
He's a very, very, very highly hyped up fighter and he had a real tough fight recently with this guy named Brad Pickett.
Brad Pickett's a tough veteran.
He's been around for a long time.
This kid, Almeida, has been beating everybody up.
And then all of a sudden he gets in this fight with his veteran and he gets cracked.
His nose gets broken.
He gets rocked really hard.
Came back the next round and knocked Pickett out.
Hit him with a flying knee and knocked him out.
But the point being that this kid got pushed to the brink.
Never lost composure.
And then you go, okay, the hype's real.
This kid's the real deal.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
And you gotta see that.
You gotta see that to know.
Because otherwise you don't know what happens when they get in trouble.
andrew marr
Absolutely.
joe rogan
You know, getting in trouble, like being able to operate while under that kind of intense pressure of being in trouble is what makes champions.
andrew marr
Hey, how do you replicate that in the fight world and training for a guy to be able to be in that situation where, hey, this is what it's going to feel like and this is how you need to respond?
Or can you replicate that?
joe rogan
You almost can't.
I mean, I think that kind of mental training, it's so difficult to try to replicate that.
There's certain drills you can do, like you do a drill where you take five fresh guys and you go in and you spar one guy for one round and then that guy goes out and you bring in a new fresh guy.
And you're tired, and that guy's friend, and they try to break you.
But there's also people that don't agree with that, because they think that that kind of, like, experiencing failure like that in the gym is actually a bad thing, because then you become comfortable with failure, and you understand it.
And some people think that it's just an attribute, that's a psychological attribute, either you're in shape, and you're prepared, and you're ready, and when adversity comes, you're going to be able to handle it, or you're not.
You know, it's really tough to put an answer to that.
It's really tough like think about like buds training I think about like how many people go through that that kind of training and just get to the point where Everybody's uncomfortable.
Everybody's miserable, but they get up and they quit And who doesn't quit the people that don't quit the people that you're gonna count on right like what why why this is their first time doing this Because they made the decision beforehand.
andrew marr
I can tell you.
They made the decision beforehand.
Like, I don't care what happens and how much it's going to suck.
In my mind, I've now embraced it.
And I've told myself that I'm going to enjoy it.
And no matter what, I'm not quitting.
I'll lose a leg before I quit.
But if you have even the slightest inkling of, this sucks, I can't believe I have to do another 20 miles and hump 100 pounds, then you're thinking, hmm, it's easy to step off to the side over there and be done.
But if you have a mental mind frame, and you can train it, if you have that mental mind frame of, I will not, they might not take me, but it won't be because I didn't finish this damn thing.
It won't be because I'm not physically and mentally here doing everything that's asked of me.
joe rogan
Well, when you say you can train it, they don't try to train it in you, though, before they prepare you for that.
andrew marr
No, absolutely not.
They want the person who does it on their own, innate.
joe rogan
I think it's the same with fighters.
I really do.
dr mark gordon
Either you have it or you don't.
joe rogan
Yeah, and that's why, similarly, there's just a small percentage of people that ever get through that kind of training, right?
There's similarly a small percentage of people that ever get to the elite level of competition, and I think in any form, in any sport, in anything where you're trying to push yourself, anything that's difficult, Any really difficult endeavor reveals character.
andrew marr
Yeah, it's beautiful.
It's a beautiful process.
joe rogan
It is.
It's amazing.
And it's amazing to see in yourself.
And even, you know, the people that experience or that quit, even that can be a lesson.
You know, you can learn from that lesson and rebuild and never, never experience that again.
dr mark gordon
Out of curiosity, in your training, what percentage of people actually complete the training?
andrew marr
So, through our initial Special Forces assessment and selection, only about 33% get through that.
Then you go through the training pipeline, which is anywhere for about a year and a half to two, two and a half years, and that's about 50% of the people, I think, you know, actually get through that.
dr mark gordon
So you get 16% who get through.
andrew marr
Yeah, it's a very small percentage.
joe rogan
And that's people that have the courage to join.
dr mark gordon
Right.
joe rogan
So, you know, you think about how many people are willing to sign up.
I mean, that's a small percentage, too.
So a small percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage.
andrew marr
Everybody wants to be a cool guy until things go wrong.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
andrew marr
Nobody wants to be a cool guy anymore.
dr mark gordon
Do you know what it is with the SEALs in San Diego?
andrew marr
It's very similar.
dr mark gordon
Similar to it.
andrew marr
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's got to be.
It's all very, very small percentage.
dr mark gordon
So the question is, if it's 16% in that arena, What is it in boxing or in MMA or in fighting?
joe rogan
Well, in MMA, there's also a lot of physical gifts that come into play.
Like, we were talking about guys that quit.
There's guys that quit that are at the elite level.
They just don't run into anybody as good as them.
And as long as they keep training and they keep pushing ahead, they'll bulldoze and bum-rush all these guys that are in there with them.
But there's guys, you know, I don't want to mention names.
I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
These guys have won world titles that are quitters.
andrew marr
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a fact.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
They're just really good.
Or they've been cheating.
It's been a lot of steroid use, EPO, a lot of different things.
andrew marr
But even then, they have to fine-tune those skills.
I mean, anybody can do those drugs, and they can't hit a home run, or they can't put somebody in a rear-neck of jokes.
joe rogan
They're not entirely weak.
dr mark gordon
Right.
joe rogan
See, you know, they might, like, some people can run a marathon.
Can they run an ultramarathon?
Can they do 100 miles in 24 hours?
A lot of people can't, but some people can.
So the people that run that ultramarathon, they'll look at other people that can't run a marathon, or the people that run a regular marathon, will look at people that can't run a marathon that'll quit at mile 16 or whatever, and they'll go, well, you just fucking don't have the mental toughness.
Maybe they don't have the mental toughness to go 100 miles.
You know, there's levels to everything in this life.
andrew marr
Sure.
joe rogan
And there's people that are at the elite level of MMA that I know, I know that if they get in a bad spot, they're going to quit.
They're going to fold up shop.
andrew marr
Everybody has a breaking point.
I can tell you that for a fact.
Every human has a breaking point.
So there's no unbreakable dude walking around today.
unidentified
No.
andrew marr
Even though he might think so.
joe rogan
Yeah, a lot of people think so.
And a lot of people think so without ever being tested.
And I don't even think they think it.
I think they're just saying it so that they think that they can convince you and maybe somehow or another it'll convince themselves if you believe it.
dr mark gordon
You know, is it nurture or is it nature?
Is it just what they want to do?
Is it a psychological decision to do it or is it their matrix of how they're It's a very good question.
This is the limit of their capacity.
joe rogan
I had this puppy.
And this is obviously a dog and not a person.
But I had this dog.
His name was Frank Sinatra.
It's the craziest fucking dog I've ever had.
It was nuts.
His mother was a wild boar hunting dog from Hawaii.
His dog was fucking crazy.
He was crazy.
But when he was a puppy, one of the reasons I realized he was crazy was he would always like to play bite and stuff.
He was really little.
He was only two months old.
I, you know, he would come up to me and bite my hands and I'd push him away.
And he'd run up and bite my hand again and I'd push him away.
And I'm like, how many fucking times can I do this?
I pushed him away 80 times before I got tired of doing it.
I go, one, I push him.
I'm a fucking human, okay?
I'm a grown man, and he's a baby dog, and I'm pushing him away from me.
And he never got discouraged.
Not once.
At number 80, I'm like, all right, buddy, bite my hand.
Let's just call this a loss.
But that was 100% nature.
This is not nurture.
I haven't taught this dog that.
All I've taught him to do is, you know, get pet and give him dog food, give him kisses, but in his makeup, and there's that question of epigenetics, like, how much of your character do you get from your parents, like, just in your DNA? How much can you mold on your own?
I mean, I think there's an untold number of variables, and nature and nurture, it's neither or, it's all the above, it's environment, there's so many different things that are So, you know, you can't really, you know, put these people down for not being able to succeed at the level that you've, like the analogy you did with the super marathon and the marathon person who does, like I do, a 5k and I'm wasted.
Right.
dr mark gordon
I'm not a runner.
I'm a swimmer.
joe rogan
But if you decided you were a runner and then put in the work, you would be a runner.
Given any, you know, I mean, whether your knees hold up or ankle problems or all that jazz, if you decided to, you can do it.
It's not outside the realm of possibility.
It's not like you can't fly.
Well, I can't fly either.
You know, I don't have wings.
You know what I mean?
Like, we're talking about non-physical limitations.
It's a simple thing like running.
Not saying, will you beat Usain Bolt in a 100-yard dash?
No, you won't.
You know, but we're talking about some simple stuff.
unidentified
Right.
dr mark gordon
Making the commitment to do it and keeping it.
andrew marr
It's a commitment, and you have the physical and mental capacity, and then it's just whether you're going to be committed or not.
joe rogan
And whether or not you're going to embrace the suck.
dr mark gordon
I've been committed before.
andrew marr
That's the difference, Joe.
Instead of turning from whatever you're doing, embrace it, man.
You have to truly embrace it.
joe rogan
You've got to embrace the suck.
andrew marr
Then it's not something that you're trying to get out of.
You're trying to live in that moment and truly thrive in it.
And that's the difference between the elite performer and the non-elite.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, even, like, simple things.
Like, tell yourself you're gonna do an hour and a half on an elliptical machine.
Well, it seems real easy for five minutes, and then ten minutes in, you're like, fuck, I got an hour and twenty more minutes of this bullshit?
And then, you know, as you're going, You know and not reduce the level keep the level at the same and just force yourself to do it That's not easy to do but that ain't shit compared to an ultra marathon So there's levels to everything and then how about these crazy fucks that do like there's there's people that do two ultra marathons in a row like they'll do an ultra marathon and they'll do an ultra marathon back Because a regular ultramarathon is not fucking crazy enough for these people.
Because they want to find the edge.
When's the edge?
I hit it?
Nope.
I think I can go further.
I think I'm building up more endurance.
I think I'm building up more mental toughness.
I can go further.
andrew marr
Have you ever heard of Wim Hof?
joe rogan
I've heard that.
What is that?
andrew marr
The Iceman.
joe rogan
Yes, that crazy fucking guy.
andrew marr
That dude ran a marathon in the desert without drinking water.
joe rogan
Yeah.
andrew marr
He goes and does these crazy submersions and freezing temperatures, and he can keep his core temperature without changing.
He holds a world record like two hours.
joe rogan
Yeah.
andrew marr
So he's saying that he's come up with a method that he can teach you how to change your physiology to be able to adapt to these things, and it's with breathing techniques, commitment, And cold water immersion.
joe rogan
He's a fucking alien, that guy.
andrew marr
I bought his thing the other day, and me and Becky did the breathing thing, my wife, and the first day I did it, I held my breath for 2 minutes and 41 seconds.
My wife held it for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
After 15 minutes doing his breathing stuff.
dr mark gordon
And you held it for 5 minutes before reading his...
andrew marr
Well...
No.
joe rogan
Well, that guy summited Everest.
andrew marr
2 minutes and 41 seconds?
Yeah, in shorts.
unidentified
In shorts.
andrew marr
In shorts and no shirt.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Summited Everest.
andrew marr
In shorts.
He took 26 people up to Kilimanjaro.
They summited it.
And they all had cancers or ailments or whatever.
Trained them for three months.
16 of them summited it.
They did it in 20, 36 hours.
And they did it in shorts.
You know what I mean?
His whole thing is, I can train you to take over your physiology and your autotomic nervous system.
joe rogan
Well, a guy like that, see, you know, people talk about mental training.
I had Cowboy Cerrone on the other day, and I asked him if he's involved in it.
You know, he's talking about, like, mind fucks and things that go wrong in fights.
I'm like, have you ever done any mental training at all?
And he's like, never fucked with any of that stuff.
But I think you get a guy who's as tough as, like, a Cowboy Cerrone, and you teach him some shit like this?
andrew marr
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's all next level.
andrew marr
This is the elite of the elite.
You know what I mean?
So if you can get your physical performance up to the top level, then you're selling yourself short if you're not also having a mental aspect to your game.
You have to have a mental aspect to your game.
You have to be mentally draining.
joe rogan
I think also people get used to shit.
You get used to stuff.
And you get used to stuff where it's not that bad anymore.
Have you done the cryotherapy yet?
Have you done any of that?
dr mark gordon
No.
joe rogan
What are you doing after this?
You want to go do it?
270 degrees, blow zero for three minutes.
It's fucking awesome.
andrew marr
My mom did it.
She said it was amazing.
joe rogan
Amazing.
You get out of there, you feel like a fucking werewolf, like you're gonna run through buildings.
andrew marr
Oh, sign this up.
joe rogan
The point is, though, like, I do it so often, it's nothing.
But the first time I did it, I was like, holy shit.
Now I do it, I just stand there.
Like, I literally, like, the timer goes off at three minutes, and I'm like, I can't.
I can keep going.
I can just keep going.
My body, it's so normal to me, I get used to it.
I wonder if that's what's going on with this Wim Hof guy, too.
It's like his mind has a category for these states, and he puts himself in these states, and he can slowly but surely increase the duration of these states, and the suffering, and his body understands how to mitigate whatever issues might come up from He's got a documentary on Vice, Joe.
andrew marr
Check it out.
It's about 39, 40 minutes long.
joe rogan
Yeah, I keep hearing about it, and I haven't looked into it enough.
andrew marr
I've watched it so much, I bought the program.
It's like a 10-week program for $200.
I was like, I'm getting it.
That's awesome.
I want to do that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I need to get that guy in here.
Those people that are like that, those outliers, those real outliers, those people that, like I said, when you talk about doing an ultramarathon or something along those lines, for most people, the amount of mental toughness is involved in that is insane.
And then you hear about this guy, and you're like, well, fuck.
Well, there's always going to be someone who's taking it to the next place.
The next guy's going to do it fucking barefoot, you know?
andrew marr
He's cool because he hooks up with scientists and they regulate everything.
They take the blood before, during, after.
He's hooked up to the machine.
So he's like, he can prove.
Now it's proven, evidence proven what he's doing.
That's what's really cool about it.
That's from being different from some religious kook or whatever.
Hey, this is how I'm doing it.
This is why.
This is how I'm affecting my autotomic nervous system.
And now I've got the science to back it up.
joe rogan
Right, so a lot of people, they look at that and they think of it as like walking on coals, which is really just kind of a horseshit trick.
You just walk fast and your foot gets fucked up, but you're fine.
Whereas this guy, I love that too, that he has brought in scientists to make sure there's zero fuckery involved here.
This is a guy that really understands how to regulate his body temperature and his breathing.
andrew marr
It's pretty amazing.
No false hope.
But that's exactly what we're doing with Dr. Gordon and the foundation.
Hey, there's no false hope here.
You know what I mean?
So what he's doing, what I love about him, he's like, hey, no false hope.
What we're putting out to the guys out here, if you're listening, there's no false hope in Dr. Gordon's program and through the Warrior Angels Foundation.
It's all science-evidence-based, and we've set up a system that's so advanced that you don't even have to go to a doctor's office to be able to see Dr. Gordon.
Everything is paperless, done through Skype, so we've got personalized, individualized methods for medicine to see one of the world's most renowned people to treat traumatic brain injuries.
We're now bringing that to every veteran that signs up through our program.
joe rogan
Dude, you brought the whole thing full circle.
I like how you did that.
You've been doing media.
andrew marr
You know what you're doing.
joe rogan
You know how to bring it back.
Now, the Warrior Angels Foundation, what does anybody have to do if they want to get involved in this?
Say someone's listening to this and they're thinking to themselves, this applies to me.
I know this could help me.
I know I have this issue.
andrew marr
All you have to do is go to our website, go to our treatment page, and start filling in your information.
joe rogan
And the website is Warrior Angel Foundation.
andrew marr
Warrior Angels with the S. WarriorAngelsFoundation.org So you go through, you fill out your initial information, then you get started in our automated process.
You'll get Dr. Gordon's...
Patient intake form, you know, the long one.
And you'll fill that out.
Get it back to us through email.
Never have to print out anything.
No printing, no nothing, man.
It's all digitalized.
All done through the cloud.
So we get all that information.
Once we get all your information in, Dr. Gordon and his office check it.
They make sure you're a good candidate.
Once that's been decided, we'll go ahead and we'll start funding you.
And when we make the funds go through, you'll get your blood test.
We'll send, we have Access Labs in Florida.
All right, so they'll do your labs.
So they send the labs to you, to wherever you're at, and they will make plans for you to go to a lab that's the closest to your geographical location.
So that's the only time you're going to have to leave your house to do this thing.
So you'll go, you'll go to leave your house, go get your lab drawn.
They'll take it.
They'll take the labs.
They'll send that back to Florida.
Florida will get it.
They'll analyze the results.
They'll send the results to Dr. Gordon.
Dr. Gordon gets it.
He gets the results.
They schedule an appointment with you to do a one-on-one consultation, and he'll go over everything in complete detail and answer all your questions there, and then go over What your protocols, what he thinks your protocols should be.
dr mark gordon
Yeah, before we actually do a Skype, I write a four-page report which gets sent by email to the patient, and it has English in it, not just medicalese, and it explains some of the results, and it gives them a chart of what the suggested first group of Products or the first approach will be and then through FedEx we send a very comprehensive patient handbook that's put together specifically based upon their lab results.
It's about 80 pages in total and explains why we did every single one of the tests and how they interpret out and then supportive documentation from the general medical literature that's out there.
And then through the Skype, which is 45 minutes to an hour, we go through every single one of the lab tests and how it pertains to them after we, you know, discuss their traumas or whatever, their accidents that they had, or if they're a civilian, the lack of any accident, but here's what your results are.
And then we make arrangements for either their doctor to participate with us or one of our doctors, you know, since November 12th when I saw you last year, my new book on traumatic brain injury came out and a new lecture series came out and we did that in San Diego.
And part of the reason why there are now more doctors aware of what we do is because we train 45 docs from 5 different countries in the protocols that we've developed over the past 10 years and the results.
Andrew was there and spoke to them.
We had a night, a Friday night, which was a military night since we were so close to Coronado Island.
the military, anyone active or presently a veteran to come to the meeting and to hear Andrew talk about his own life's experience.
You know, I can be the egghead and tell you about the science that's behind it, it but what's really impacting on both the psychological emotional level is listening to someone as you did to matthew gosney when he was on the show and andrew telling his story of how he transitioned from this phenomenal life to this great military life that then the injuries and then what happened after it
and then having all these standardized medical procedures done which really didn't help to bring him to the level that he's at right now which is according to his mother father sister brother your dog also said that you were acting much better than you were in the past Yeah.
Right?
And his life has transitioned.
The emails he sends you about, you know, the quality that he's experiencing, that's what it's about.
Regardless of what we do, it's always about, unfortunately, the end point of the journey that we're taking right now.
Is that bringing you back to a functionality where you're enjoying life?
How's your life?
andrew marr
Yeah, couldn't be any better.
Couldn't be any better.
And that's what we're saying.
Hey, we want to bring this to everybody out there who's been told, like I was told, this is the new you.
Take a notebook around with you because you're going to have to write stuff down because you're not going to be able to remember it.
joe rogan
And here's an important thing.
There's a donate link, and the donate link at warriorangelsfoundation.org.
The donate link is really important because there's a lot of guys that just don't have the funds.
They don't have funds for this kind of treatment, and it's not covered by insurance companies.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
joe rogan
I mean, is any insurance covering this at all?
unidentified
No.
dr mark gordon
What happened, let's see, how Matthew Gosney got in is I take a percentage of my practice and put it into a separate fund.
And that's how I think I started funding the military is through our practice.
Because it's, you know, for a year, the first year, it's $5,000.
All inclusive.
Everything.
Because we've gotten donations from our laboratory.
The laboratory that we use, Access Medical Lab, has given us a lot of money to help offset the cost for the labs.
Our compounding pharmacy, University Compounding Pharmacy, gave us a $100,000 grant so that Testosterone is for free.
Any of the compounding products are free.
Another pharmacy, Ike's Pharmacy, gives us all our Clomid so that the first three months of product for the less than 40-year-old veterans, they get Clomid, which helps stimulate their own body to make testosterone.
We just got a $10,000 grant from Pure Encapsulations for the key antioxidants that we use for brain health.
andrew marr
A lot of help streamlining those costs.
But get this, Joe, the $5,000 in year one is compared to what the VA spends, which is $15,000 in the Congressional Budget Office report in 2012. For TBI and PTSD, $15,000 to $16,000 to treat that.
And all they use is medication and psychotherapy.
So it gets more as the years goes on, whereas we're fixing the underlying condition.
We're fixing the problem.
dr mark gordon
$5,000 for the first year, about $3,500, $2,500, $3,500 the second year, and then every year thereafter, the cost is about $1,500.
The same COB, was it?
They had $66 billion is what they're paying for all the medical care in 2012. $66 billion.
andrew marr
That's why we're getting listened to, because we're like, look at the difference and variations of these prices of what you guys are spending and the end result.
But nobody cared about the end result.
They cared about numbers.
unidentified
Isn't that crazy?
dr mark gordon
Yeah.
And let me just tell anybody who's listening.
My daughter has a jewelry company and she's volunteered to gift to anyone who gives $5,000 a coin which is 1,800 years of age silver coin from Rome.
All authentic.
They look brand new coins.
As a gift to anyone who helps us with $5,000.
EraCoins, or Era, if I can say her website?
unidentified
Sure.
dr mark gordon
Okay.
It's E-R-A-B-Y-R-G.com, and on there you'll see giving, and it actually shows what she's producing in her jewelry company and donating to Warrior Angel Foundation, so that they can hand it out to people who are donating money.
joe rogan
Now, is there any resistance to this, this type of training?
Are there any detractors?
dr mark gordon
Training in the sense of...
joe rogan
Not training, treatment rather.
dr mark gordon
No.
In fact, everything is FDA approved.
Everything is being used at physiological levels.
I think I shared with you on past show that we use a blended testosterone injectable that we developed about 14 years ago.
Which gets into the brain a lot faster than the cipionate and the enanthate that's out there, different types of testosterone.
And we use a very low dose, 40 milligrams, which is the amount that a healthy 25 to 35 year old makes in a week's time.
So we're using everything physiologic.
And it's not just about hormone replenishment.
It's about the micronutrients that we are using to help with the hormones so that they work.
I mean, you need to have a well-balanced machinery in the brain in order to get all the benefits.
And no one is addressing the inflammatory aspect to brain trauma.
And without addressing that, you can't get improvement.
Sustained improvement.
joe rogan
They're developing new testosterone that's animal-based.
Instead of using yams, they're using animals somehow or another, and they're avoiding detection with all these drug testing when they're doing these carbon isotope tests.
This is like the new...
Yeah, this is the new thing that the people on the fringe of the cheating movement.
dr mark gordon
Well, if you can get the testosterone more so into the brain, because where does testosterone really work?
Yeah, it does work to help build muscle, but what controls the muscle?
The brain.
We were just talking about how people succeed in freezing and Iceman and Kilimanjaro.
It's all the brain.
So if you can increase the brain's ability to be resistant to failure, Meaning that you've got a mindset, you're going to do it.
Regardless of hell or high water, you're going to do it.
That's really where the benefits are.
joe rogan
And testosterone increases those benefits.
dr mark gordon
Correct.
And low dose, very well absorbable, like testosterone propionate, gets into the system, into the cells in three to four hours, and it's out of the blood.
So you don't detect it.
Propionate.
joe rogan
What about that?
Do you develop drops with liposomal?
dr mark gordon
Nanoliposome.
It's a compounded product.
We developed the vehicle that the compounding pharmacies can legally put the testosterone into this liquid and the liquids put under the tongue or put into the mouth and washed around and gets absorbed because the particle size is so small it gets absorbed rapidly.
joe rogan
But this is a different one.
This is something you have to do every day, right?
dr mark gordon
This is one that, yeah, our testing showed that either once a day, ideally once a day is the best, but you get to regulate the responsiveness that you have, the response.
So if you want to have a nice, easy day, you take one squirt on the tongue.
If you want to have a really energetic day, you take two.
If you want to have a fun night for many hours, you take four squirts.
unidentified
That sounds like you're encouraging people to get fucking crazy.
joe rogan
That's what I'm hearing.
dr mark gordon
Hey!
I educate everybody.
It's prescription only, and with all the great doctors out there, they'll regulate it.
andrew marr
And it's not a magic pill, but what it'll do is it'll allow you to live life the way it was intended to be.
You know what I mean?
So before, if you couldn't react to something, now you'll be able to react to things appropriately.
You'll be able to do things appropriately.
Whereas if your neurochemistry is not in balance, then you can't.
unidentified
So this will give you the opportunity to do that.
joe rogan
So, in closing, is there anything else you guys want to say?
WarriorAngelsFoundation.org is where you can go to learn more about this.
andrew marr
Yeah, we've got a crowdfunding campaign that you can get to through our website.
We've got awesome perks on there, like a range day with me shooting at the range.
You've got videos on there for that.
Cool mugs or whatever.
So, some incentives to give and anything you want to find out about Dr. Gordon or also his daughter will be on our website as well.
dr mark gordon
I will say that Life Extension Magazine that in 2012 did the article on hormones to heal the brain in the military is doing a follow-up article where they've gone to six or eight of our patients,
four I think military and two or four non-military, and interviewed them to get their Experience over the past few years that since the 2012 article And I think it'll be important for those people who are thinking about maybe getting involved in what we're doing to read that I think it's coming out The end of the year to read it and listen to the experience or else go back to the Matthew Gosney Jason Hall November 12th of last year and listen to The podcast that was done
because I get a lot of calls of how many people exactly what he said was what I'm going through And I think listening to those that are interested and get onto the program is more important than anything I can say.
andrew marr
And also, Joe, because we're on here today, lives will be changed, man.
It's probably hard to comprehend that, but thank you for this opportunity because it's gonna have a ripple effect that you probably aren't gonna be able to understand.
But by being on here, things are things we're gonna affect people's lives in a positive, positive way.
Thank you.
joe rogan
That's what I hope and thank you.
Thank you for starting this foundation.
Thank you for being so active with it, Dr. Gordon.
I mean, this is all amazing stuff and whenever you hear about people getting help like this, And how effective it is.
This is a beautiful thing.
This is really awesome.
unidentified
Thank you.
dr mark gordon
Appreciate it.
joe rogan
All right, folks.
So, warriorangelsfoundation.org.
Go there.
Check out the crowdfund link.
Check out the donate button and become a part of this, folks.
You can help.
All right.
Thank you, everybody.
That's it for this week.
We'll see you soon.
unidentified
Bye-bye.
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