← Change Your Brain Every Day
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- [00:02]
A
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. To start, give me like five minutes summary.
- [00:22]
B
Okay.
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A
Of your journey. Sure.
- [00:26]
B
Born in abject poverty to birth parents who after they had me on drugs and alcohol. They were on drugs and alcohol. Taken away from our birth parents by the foster care system, placed in separate homes. My birth brother and I were initially together. He died right near me.
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A
How old were you when you were taking.
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B
He was 10 months older than me. So I was anywhere between. I was just a few months old. I was taken in by the Hines family at nine months of age. After my brother died and things seemed to be going well, I started to acclimate to the Hines home. Initially, I was a very sick child because of abandonment issues and a detachment disorder from reality that had occurred after my brother died. After being taken away from our birth parents. Grew up in a very stable home, loving family, a beautiful life. At 17, it all came crashing down. And I always say my brain broke. I had a complete mental breakdown on stage in front of 1200 people. I was a theater kid playing one of the leads in the show on opening night. I believe that 1200 people were going to simultaneously rise, rest the stage and end my life. So I ran off stage in the middle of the play. The theater director had to resume my position to finish the show. I was very soon thereafter diagnosed with bipolar type 1 with psychotic features, which I haphazardly battled, believing I didn't want to have that diagnosis. I didn't like it. I didn't want to be labeled mentally ill. I just wanted to be the kid that was the WCL football champion, the wrestling champion, the football team went to state, all this stuff. So I wanted it to go away. And so I was in denial. And at 19, in the middle of that denial, I became so good at silencing my pain. Having hallucinations, auditory and visual paranoid delusions, believing that people were out to get me, trying to hurt me, trying to kill me. Constant manic episodes followed by depression, because once you go up, you must come down. And panic attacks and the like. And I kept it all to myself. I convinced my father on September 25th of the year 2000 that I was going to be okay going to City College to have the day. On that day, I attempted to take my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. A method of suicide, which is 99.99% fatal. Fell 240ft, 25 stories, closing in on 80 miles per hour, nearing the speed of internal velocity. And I prayed that I would live. Instantaneous regret. From the millisecond, my hands left the rail, which is actually very common with suicidal actions. And in the water I was drowning and a sea lion brought me to the surface and kept me afloat until the coast guard bought a ride behind me. These wonderful co Scout officers saved my life secondarily. And then this back surgeon, one of the foremost back surgeons on the west coast came in. He was apparently not supposed to be there that day, did a surgery on me at the time that was the first and only of a particular kind. He invented it for me to reshape my back with titanium to save me the ability to stand, walk and run. Of the 39 Golden Gate Bridge jump survivors, only five of us can stand, walk and run. It was an. It was a rough road after that. 10 psych ward stays in the next. Well from 2000 to 2019. But after the third involuntary psych ward stay, I kind of got hip and got wise to it and I became self aware.
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A
When did you start hallucinating?
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B
I started hallucinating at 17, the same time I had the paranoid delusions.
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A
Does it come in cycles? Is, you know, when I think of bipolar, I think of people that have long periods of normal periods of deep depression and then periods of mania, but they last like weeks or months at a time. You're in one state, then the other state.
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B
So I would rapid cycle.
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A
You're a rapid cycle.
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B
So I would skyrocket into mania. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I'd crash into depression. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I'd stay in that depression for some time and then, and then I'd come back up.
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A
How was school? Tell me about school.
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B
What level? I was in grade school. It was. It was awful. I was in an all white school. I was the only part black kid in the school. And it was brutal. They treated me like I was. They told me I was garbage. The 8th graders picked me up and put me in garbage cans and said that's what I was.
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A
This is what city, San Francisco.
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B
And other kids would hold me down and say, swing, little N word, swing. To try to get away. And they were older than me. I was in fourth grade when they were in eighth grade doing that, the kids in my own class would do things like get behind me, kneel down, and then someone from the front would push me until I cracked my head in the concrete. It was awful.
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A
And how, how was school itself?
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B
Kindergarten through 8th grade. The issue Was the biggest thing was distraction. I was very easily distracted. Things took my attention that weren't scholastic
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A
and did your parents ever get you sass?
- [06:10]
B
Doesn't sound like, not that I can recall for that. I know, I know. In college I was by the, by the disability program. I was diagnosed with add. I, I, that was only a one time diagnosis. I don't know how.
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A
And did they ever give you medicine for that?
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B
No, no, just, just the medicine for the bipolar.
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A
Yeah, yeah. No, Sometimes stimulants can unbalance someone with bipolar, but just because you have bipolar disorder doesn't mean you can't also have add.
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B
Fair enough.
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A
When I looked at how you filled out the questionnaires, depression, panic, anxiety, bulimia. Tell me about that.
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B
Yeah, in high school wrestling, it's.
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A
Oh, it's part of the culture.
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B
Yeah, it's very much part of the culture. And the coaches are unaware. I didn't know what it was when it was happening. I just knew that I had to make weight. And you'd get to a certain weight and they'd go, we need you to go to this weight. And so you gotta cut that weight in six days before meet. And then you cut that weight before, six ways before. Six days before a meet in 90 degree heat in the mat room or you're out with the plastic jackets, running in circles or running up the hills and sweating profusely without adequate water, without, you know, it was a mess. And by the time I get to the meet, I'm exhausted, I've made weight. So then I go eat tons of, eat a big meal. And then right after the match, I purge and I, I just, I said to myself, oh, I'm just, you know, I just keep getting the flu. Just keep getting the flu. And it was my mom as a nurse who's like, Kevin, this is a problem. You, you have an eating disorder. And I was in denial then and I, I, that, that lasted for some time. You're held when this has gone, let's see, 16, 17, 18.
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A
Okay, yeah.
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B
And then I, you know, and then out of high school and out of wrestling, I got that under control. And that wasn't happening anymore. I still hadn't labeled it yet or felt I needed to. But then at 2018, I developed secondary burns across my entire body because of a reaction to a new medication. And I felt like knives and needles are coming from my bones, through my skin, everywhere. For 38 weeks, 24 hours a day, I had bloody blisters from head to toe.
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A
What medicine was it?
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B
They believed it was profetosine that was causing this. They took me off all psych meds, all asthma meds, all allergy meds simultaneously. Within 24 hours I had a complete 48 hour withdrawal based psychosis. It was, it was really bad. But at that time, for the 38 week period of being in that pain and living with those burns, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I was diagnosed with five simultaneous sleep disorders.
- [09:21]
A
Has anybody ever looked at your brain?
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B
No.
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A
No. Because spec looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And it basically shows us three things. Good activity, too little or too much. And then our is to balance it behind me. This is what a healthy scan looks like. So here's your scan.
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B
Okay.
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A
And you have a lot of really good brain activity. So let us be grateful and hopeful. But you can see the trauma. Can you see this area right there? Of course it's not supposed to have a dent. Right there, that's trauma. And maybe that's trauma from hitting the water or from wrestling or from some of the other things you did.
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B
And then that's a dent in my brain.
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It's decreased blood flow. But you see this hole right here?
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B
Yeah.
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A
That's your left temporal lobe. And that's often an area when it's heard. I often say people have dark, evil, awful thoughts. So one of my hero stories is my nephew who attacked a little girl on the baseball field for no reason. Out of the blue. He was drawing pictures of himself shooting other children and hanging from a tree. It was really off. He's nine years old.
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B
Oh, wow.
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A
He had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying this space. So yeah, you can see it right here. And that can come from trauma. So if you do what I ask you to do and it works like we hope this is how much better it can be.
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B
A whole bunch of them.
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A
Okay.
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B
Wow.
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A
Every day you want to love your brain. So the big thing I add to this sort of mental health discussion, it's not mental health, it's brain health.
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B
Brain health? Yeah.
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A
The brain can continue to just get better and better if you do the right things. Now let's look at the inside. It's pretty impressive. You have a very busy brain. Your cerebellum. So this is that quality control part we talked about. It's great.
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B
Okay.
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A
Beautiful.
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B
Good.
- [11:50]
A
It's the cerebellum of an athlete. But your anxiety centers are really busy and your mood centers are busy. I'm going to put you on a really good multi vitamin that's brain directed. It's loaded with bees. That will help stabilize your mood. Omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin D, like, I think, so important. And then I want you to keep me posted on how you do.
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B
I promise I will.