On today’s episode we somewhat pickup where we left off last with Dr. Berry and dive into the subject of low level lasers and brain health. As a functional neurologist, Dr. Berry provides some amazing insights as to applications and implications with using lasers for a wide range of brain and body conditions for patients. You definitely want to check this episode out! To find out more about Dr. Trevor Berry go to: https://azchironeuro.com/
Or to attend one of his upcoming Erchonia seminars you can go to:
https://www.erchonia.com/seminars/
Transcript:
Dr. Chad Woolner: All right, everybody. Welcome back to The Laser Light Show. This is episode number 10. And we have again with us back by popular demand. Dr. Berry. He is going to be talking with us about lasers and the future of brain health. So let’s get right to it.
Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs synced up to some of my favorite music. From the Beatles to Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix and Metallica; they were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have such a profound effect on my life decades later. As a chiropractic physician, I have seen first-hand just how powerful laser therapy is in helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers. On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low-level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Woolner along with my good friend Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to The Laser Light Show.
Okay, welcome to the show again, Dr. Berry. We’re super excited to have you here and excited to explore this next topic, we’re, you know, we started to kind of delve into the brain area, but we kind of had to kind of put the brakes on it just a little bit because we wanted to stay somewhat within that realm of back pain. But obviously, you can’t really talk chronic back pain or even acute back pain for that matter without getting into the brain, obviously. But now you have full rein to just go nuts and go crazy and talk all things brains. So with that being said, huge thanks again for taking time out of your schedule to be here with us. We’re super excited to dive into this topic with you.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Great to be here again. Really enjoyed the first episode and yeah, as you guys saw in that last episode, I’m chomping at the bit here. I’m like the horse that won the Kentucky Derby. Let me fly or let’s let’s do this. Yeah, this is definitely, you know, right in my wheelhouse as far as what I get, you know, the most exciting and it’s not, you know, obviously, there’s a big crossover, like studies show chronic pain and neurodegeneration are, they’re together. So that’s why we got to, we have to have modalities to be able to address not just the peripheral pain symptoms, but all the effects on the central nervous system.
And the worse your brain is, the worse your pain is. So yeah, you know, even when you’re if you’re doing pain management only, you want to do things to address the brain to help promote resolution of the pain syndromes. So that’s a big topic of conversation. But my big thing with the laser stuff with brains is, there’s a saying in the industry, you buy a laser for your own brain and your own loved ones, your own family members, so that you can treat your brain and protect your brains and central nervous system and anything else you want to deal with, and the patients just get to be the benefactors of that investment. And so it’s like, it’s one of those things where you want to invest like, what price you put on your own brain. As we said in my first episode, you know, I did, I’m doing this for my daughters, you know, protect, I’ve got two daughters. My ex, you know, has a severe neurodegenerative predilection, I was trying to find ways to protect those two. So it’s kind of one of those things where what price do I put on their brain. Knowing what these lasers do, you can pay a million dollars, and it’d be a good value, because of, you know, how effective they are in protecting the brain and even repairing the brain. So we’ll navigate some of those really cool waters with brain based rehab throughout the course of this episode.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, I was gonna say when we…first off, you know, when we talk to doctors, Dr. Wells and I, we do some training with doctors, and one of the most common themes that we keep running back to is we keep teaching dogs to think upstream. And it doesn’t get any more upstream than the brain. And when we talk about the brain, in general, for the sake of simplicity, for today’s episode, and if you want to dive into other realms, by all means this is your playground here. But I would say the two big topics that I think of when we talk about brain health is is like neurodegenerative, like you said, and then like, you know, acute injuries with like young athletes like concussion and mild traumatic or even just outright traumatic brain injuries, you know. And so in those types of two categories, I’m assuming you’ve seen both of those types of cases come into your clinic. Maybe speak to kind of both of those lanes and everything in between for that matter, as well.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, and what’s neat about that is that there’s actually a crossover between neurodegeneration and acute TBI or traumatic brain injury stuff. Because one of the big mechanisms that causes our brains to go south, whether it’s drinking a Diet Coke, whether it’s having a cell phone next to your head, whether it’s having a stroke, whether it’s getting punched in the head or get in tackled in football, it has to do with a process, one of the the underpinnings of it is called glutamate excitotoxicity.
So you have these receptors on your neurons in your brain that glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter. Now, we need that to activate the system. But you don’t want to have too much of that activity going on. And because of too much happens, you allow too much calcium into the neuron. And if too much calcium comes rushing into the neuron, two primary things happen. Either the cell goes poof, called apoptosis, the cell basically explodes for over simplified term, and that has a spreading effect. It starts to wipe out adjacent neurons. While studies showed, if you pretreated your brain with laser, you can actually mitigate that spreading effect. So you’ll have better outcomes in a TBI or stroke or things like that. But also, another thing that can happen is if too much calcium comes rushing, you can start to kick off these free radicals, the superoxide anions, peroxy nitrite formation, it causes free radical damage to the cell, mitochondrial DNA damage, cellular DNA damage, things like that. So that is very much an energy dependent thing to protect against that. So one of the benefits of lasers, amongst many things is that it will actually promote energy production of the mitochondria and even promote mitochondrial biogenesis. So that powerhouse of the cell, if you laser any tissue in your body, including your brain, it actually promotes a new mitochondrial formation within that cell.
So whether it’s a muscle rehab, cardiac tissue, brain tissue, things like that, another big one is the kick, when you start having cell damage, it can kick off faulty proteins, when you hear about these terms, like how hyperphosphorylation and neurofibrillary tangles, that’s just a fancy way of saying the proteins that are the building blocks for let’s say, the microtubules and all the organelles inside your neurons, they get misfolded and that cell basically shrivel up and die. So cell neuron A can’t talk to neuron B. So laser studies have actually shown is that you can not only actually protect against neurofibrillary tangles, there is actually evidence of reversal of it. That is such a profound statement that you can actually untangle that protein missiles, they help the neurons keep communicating properly to each other. And one of my favorite topics is this is that what do you guys think would be the holy grail of protecting the brain? What might what might be one example of something that would be if you could do anything to the brain? What comes to mind when I ask that question?
Dr. Chad Woolner: I think BDNF helping with, you know, brain derived neurotrophic factor.
Dr. Trevor Berry: All right. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. The holy grail of brain activity is not just BDNF, which is where you get the new synaptic activity, dendritic sprouting and pruning so that those neurons not only they connect to each other, they have more connections, so it’s more efficient, things like that. Lasers to the brain promote BDNF output. And it gets one better than that is that actually promotes neurogenesis. So not just new connections, but actually lasers to the brain actually promote new neuronal formation. Because remember, for the longest time, we used to think you had somewhere between 86 billion and 100 billion neurons to work with. And that was that there was, yes, neurons will go through mitosis. But what the newer research shows is that things like laser to the brain will actually promote neurogenesis along with BDNF. And it only takes one joule, or 0.8 joules per centimeter squared to the tissue to do it. So another reason I love Erchonia is that stays again in that low level hormetic dose of staying below 13 joules per centimeter square to the brain. So just getting the laser on the brain has the potential to make new neuronal activation and neuronal pathways. So that’s what talking about a holy grail that by itself should be worth the investment for the doctors to put into their brain.
Dr. Andrew Wells: So we started off talking about neurodegenerative conditions and things like TBI is, but what, correct me if I’m wrong? Are you saying that lasering the brain can actually have a performance benefit as well?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yes. And that’s the big thing that we get is like, we get these CEOs of companies and stuff flying to see us because it’s not just about, you know, damaged tissue. Yeah, we that’s a obviously a very underserved and needed area of neurological rehabilitation. But we’re working with Olympic athletes, that they’re not showing Alzheimer’s or post concussion, they’re trying to shave that, you know, tenths of a second or a 100th of a second off the reaction times and things like that. Lasers to the brain have been shown to create optimization of brain activity. And muscle performance. I referenced a study in my seminar that there was even it was, it was in PubMed, say we should potentially ban low level lasers because of the performance enhancements that it creates for Olympic level athletes. So, you know, obviously that’s not going to come to fruition but that, you know, just the idea of banning it because it’s not like a you know, a banned substance performance. It just talks about how it optimizes physiology of muscle and neurological activity. So yes, in short, it helps with cognitive thought, executive function, things like that. So it’s not just about taking patients from a symptomatic state to improving it, it’s taking whatever high level you’re acting it and being even higher than that. So yes, optimization is big.
Dr. Andrew Wells: I want to clear something off the table first, because I know, I imagine you get this question from patients, is it safe to laser brains?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, that’s probably the most important question, because what study after study has shown and I can show you dozens and dozens of studies saying that the there’s a sweet spot to brain tissue exposure, and that’s between 0.3 joules and 13 joules per centimeter square. Now, I know that’s absolutely you know, Greek to most of the people listening.
What it means is that, yes, it’s safe to laser as long as you’re below that hormetic dose. So then, then, that’s why I attach my cart to Erchonia’s horse, because when I’m going to laser my kid’s brain, I wanted to make sure I had a true Laser, because that’s the key too. Because you’re going to hear us talk about LED and stuff. We use LED in our studies as the sham. It’s the placebo control. So yes, they’re the LED is talked about, but it’s inexpensive. LED’s just scattered photons. It’s like shining a light bulb near somebody’s head, and hoping to get enough energy exposure, you know. True Laser, all that energy, all those molecules are in a parallel, coherent, monochromatic wave form, all working in the same direction, so that’s what makes lasers more expensive. And one of the things I love about Erchonia is they don’t just stop there, they do FDA clearance studies. As you guys mentioned in your intro, they had 20 of the 23-24 FDA clearances. They have more than all of the laser companies combined. So you want to you want to be right in that sweet spot of 0.3 to about, you know, even 0.3 to 0.5 joules is ideal for the brain. Well Erchonia has that its its intrinsic to its dose, like the power output of the end, the fact that they have the red and violet lasers that we focus on for brain based applications.
Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, and what I’d just like to add, so just for those listening that have higher power, like class 3b, class 4 lasers, I’m not here to disparage anyone or anything like that. But I’d just be very cautious. Those devices only have FDA clearance as a medical heat lamp. That’s what they have their 510 clearances, substantial equivalence of a heat lamp, it’s not a photochemical effect, those kinds of things. So we’re not trying to cook or heat the brain tissue, we’re trying to get proper photochemical activity. So you got to be very careful about cancer about Janus molecule, ionos expression, about valence electrons, about glutamate excitotoxicity, like all these bad things that can happen in the brain, you cannot put too much power into it. So don’t think well, some some lasers good, more must be better. That’s the biggest myth and low level laser therapy and high versus high powered laser.
Dr. Chad Woolner: So I want to talk about as you’re talking about this, originally, you’re talking about the untangling of the proteins, right. I recall a talk that was given by Dr. Rhonda Patrick, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with her work, but she talks a lot about heat and cold exposure and just hormesis. And one of the things that she talked about that I remembered was that with sauna exposure, and not necessarily infrared, we’ll just say sauna because it wasn’t the infrared itself, it was the heat itself that causes the body to produce heat shock proteins, which have that same effect. Curious if you have seen anything combining lasers with heat? Not heated lasers, but lasers, plus some type of heat exposure or cold exposure, anything like that.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah. So you can definitely stack your therapies like that. Like say you’re in like maybe one of those near infrared sauna that maybe comes off the neck and you’re doing laser at the same time. So like we talked about in the last episode, anytime you stack your modalities and therapies, I’m all for it. And so basically, and what Rhonda was talking about is that when you stress the system, and this kind of a crass way of putting it, but it really drives the point home, says, “You’re dumb you just jumped in a freezing cold lake for no apparent reason. We need to make you smarter, so you never do that again.” So that will promote neuroplasticity immediately.
Like, same thing with high intensity interval training or endurance training like, “You dummy. You just ran 26.2 miles for no apparent reason. All you got was a little medal and a badge that says you completed the marathon, I’m going to make you smarter. So you never do that.” Fasting is the exact same thing. So you put the stressors on the cell. And that will make it, if it’s not overwhelming the system, it will make your system become more effective and to adapt to that environment. So that you can find that piece of food because you haven’t eaten in three days. You can go hunt down that carrot and it’s kind of your brains going to be smarter to do that.
There are some other physiological things like when you go into cold water for example, you’ll promote a rebound ENOs (endothelial nitric oxide) to help vasodilation which will help blood flow to the brain, which is a really core concept of brain health. You can’t have high blood pressure, low blood pressure. You guys know. You do your functional medicine cannot be anemic and have a healthy brain. It’s the first lab marker I look at. Making sure they’re not iron deficient or megaloblastic, or anything like that. Lasers will promote blood flow to the brain. Lasers that will promote mitochondrial health, but lasers will help overcome microvascular disease, ischemia patterns. I hate to see this on MRI reports to say, well, that’s a normal variant for their age. There’s no such thing as normal variant of microvascular disease of the brain. That’s because so many people are diabetic in this country and things like that, it appears to be like normal, because everyone has it. So those are some core concepts of getting in helping that BDNF output and making your system more more efficient. So yes, I liked that therapy.
Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s one of the most common conversations that I have to have with people is this conflation of common being normal. Right? It you know, I explained to people, like, you know, we look at X-rays all the time. And we’ll see like, you know, dramatic changes to people’s cervical neck, let’s just say, you know, a massive hypo, hypo lordosis. And people like that’s a normal finding. No, no common does not mean normal. Common means it’s an epidemic. That’s all it means. You know, like you said, diabetes and obesity. I mean, we just had this conversation on a previous episode about obesity, they’re trying to normalize that term now, because it hurts people’s feelings. You know that people don’t like being labeled obese, because it makes them feel bad. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to change the definition we’re not going to use, in fact, I’ve seen this Facebook ad for some company where they’re saying, we’re on a mission to eliminate that word obese from the conversation, and I’m like, you can eliminate the word all you want, it’s not gonna eliminate the disease, it’s not gonna eliminate the impact on the body. And no doubt obesity’s impact on the brain, you know, in terms of that, so.
Dr. Trevor Berry: So yeah, to your point, there’s a direct correlation to obesity and neurodegenerative changes like dementia. So I get it, I’m sensitive to the psychology of human behavior and whatnot. But sometimes we’re doing humankind a disservice. When we, you know, change the label or how it’s said, or, you know, what the arbitrary numbers aren’t allowed, like cholesterol is a good example. They just basically for all intents and purposes arbitrarily tried to lower it. And it’s, you know, LDL C lowering doesn’t say why. You know, “we got to get into oxidized.” It’s antiquated, that thought process. I could talk for an hour about cholesterol, we need cholesterol for the brain, people, we need LDL for the brain. But anyway, yeah, you bring up a good point that, you know, it is something that you know, and again, not to be insensitive to any of the listeners. But it is something that we want to make sure that we’re doing the best for humankind, and sometimes the labels and stuff. It’s a, it’s a bad precedent to set to go down.
Dr. Chad Woolner: So I have a question here, and I’m sure Andrew’s got plenty questions, too, but I’m going to jump on your toes for a minute. Sometimes he and I are scrambling with each other in terms of who gets the first question. You know, when we think of brain health protocols, I think most people conventionally will think of, like, especially we talk like pop health culture, you know, some of the first things that pop up are omega 3s. You know, if you’re going to gingko biloba, and stuff like that. Maybe if they’ve scratched a little bit past the surface, they’ll look at various diet strategies, you know, increasing healthy fats, maybe intermittent fasting on some level, even then I don’t even think a lot of people are talking about that, necessarily. But how do we begin shifting the conversation, not away from those things, but in conjunction to those things. A lot of the things you’re talking about here, specifically laser therapy, because I think for a lot of people, again, to Andrew’s original question, is laser therapy safe? The fact that we have to ask that question in the first place tells us boy, we got a lot of work in front of us ahead of us in terms of this becoming more mainstream and standardized, you know, what are your thoughts on that in terms of this conversation shifting? From it exclusively being diet, nutrition, and exercise and all that stuff, but adding this modality into the conversation as being just, from what you’re saying this needs to become like, truly mainstream, like every clinic needs to be doing this and using this.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, exactly. Let’s just talk about like some real low hanging fruit that would tie this in. One good example of the standard American diet is very proinflammatory, you know, our sugar access, our food sensitivities that we’re developing, to the a leaky gut, our additives that we’re putting in, like, our diet is horrible in this country. And you know, so what the way I look at lasers, it’s like the great equalizer. Because, you know, you may have speakers on like Dan Murphy, for example. Phenomenal. He’s one of my mentors. He eats as clean as anyone I know. And so he avoids lectins, he avoids weed, he avoids alcohol, you know. Pretty much, I don’t want to live that way. I eat more bacon than anyone I know. So I’m going to be a good experiment because I’m lasering my brain every day and I’m gonna try and undo, you know, some of my lifestyle choices that aren’t perfect. Because nobody’s perfect.
Everyone’s gonna have a goal and once I do that I’m realistic with my patients. Yes, we do promote to your point, like a modified paleo, I often called the Mother Nature diet. Like when Mother Nature put on this planet for us to eat. If she put it on here for us, let’s eat it. She didn’t put genetically engineered foods, she didn’t put monosodium glutamate and aspartame. She didn’t put it in all these fields. So what she did give us, grass fed grass finished, you know, beef and wild caught fish. And yeah, we want starchy plant based vegetables to be our primary, we want nuts and seeds, lots of good fats. So kind of have modified paleo. I’ll still rotate sometimes ketosis when it’s indicated. I love to your point intermittent fasting, but not everyone should be doing intermittent fasting.
Like if you’re late stage neurodegeneration, I’m not going to drive a stage five Alzheimer’s into fasting. I’m not going to drive a severely reactive hypoglycemic. So, you know, so there’s, there’s, there’s not a one size fits all for diet. But, you know, we definitely want to make sure that our food sources are good natural ones, but those of us that are, you know, we can’t live that lifestyle continuously. It’s going to be well, what can we do to make up for, say, the systemic and brain based inflammation? Well, that’s where things like laser come in, because it will help repair the damage. It will help calm down the inflammation. And that’s a big thing that even segues back into the acute phase TBI that you guys brought up. One of the big things with acute phase TBI is that prevents it from becoming post concussion syndrome is taking the brain inflammation and getting it dialed back down.
Well, that M-1 M-2 glial resolution. So yeah, these fancy terms are saying your micro glial cells are inflamed. And they need that initially, but we got to turn that inflammation off. And acute phase TBI is a good example of that. And in chronic post concussion syndrome, one of your best ways to do that is laser the brain. Well, it works the same if I’ve had a bunch of sugar and things like that, when my brain is inflamed, which by the way, when you look at studies, you don’t know we have genetic markers that make us more likely to get things like Alzheimer’s, like APOE4 and things like that. Just because you have a gene snip for something doesn’t mean it has to express.
Well, the researchers shows a number one epigenetic trip wire that’s going to push your brain off that cliff is inflammation of the brain. So if another reason if not for the nerve growth factors and the biogenesis get brain inflammation out of there by doing laser stimulation directly to the brain and the vagal nerve stuff that we can talk about. Those are kind of things that will help down regulate the inflammation. Another big one: free radical damage, you know, so we have oxidative stress. We have you know, we’re under a lot of pollutants and other stressors that you know, free radicals, even exercises, there’s that exercise paradox too much exercise cause a lot of free radical damage. Well, your lasers will actually promote glutathione production and recycling, your lasers will promote catalase, superoxide, dismutase. All your antioxidant system, just like eat a bunch of good blueberries and raspberries and stuff. Lasers promote all your antioxidants and stuff. Lasers promotes stem cell proliferation and localization. Anyone that’s like hardcore into neuroregeneration or regenerative medicine in general, all the stem cell craze that’s going on or even peptides, lasers promote new stem cell activity to the target tissue. Or if you do stem cells, make sure you get lasers on the brain assets as if it’s like a beacon of light drawing the stem cells to whatever target tissue there is. And there’s even evidence that it will help promote differentiation of your target tissue. So say you’re doing cartilage regeneration, if you laser the knee after, it’ll promote the stem cells to the knee and promote cartilage conversate activity of that tissue. Same thing with the brain. So there’s such a diverse array of applications with lasering in your brain, that come in handy to check off all the major boxes on all those physiological levels that unique.
Dr. Andrew Wells: So maybe, that’s amazing by the way. Maybe Dr. Berry, you can talk about the physiology. What’s actually happening when you’re shining light into the brain? Because I want doctors to clue into this too, all we’re using it here as light. That’s what we’re talking about. I think sometimes it sounds like too simple. And then when we hear you speaking it sounds very complex, but maybe you can help docs understand what’s actually happening when you’re when you’re doing this.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, so the basic core principle that was taught like, we have to remember that we are energy and light driven beings like without sunlight, we don’t exist as a species. So you know, it’s kind of think of it that like that energy model and when I teach a lot of times, if I’m doing my you know, the elevator pitch, if you will, it’s like we’re just like plants with photosynthesis. So that’s, that’s a concept that we’re all taught in school. Plants need that energy and they like and absorb it for all their, you know, their energy production and all the, you know, the cell might total everything that goes on for plants to thrive.
We’re no different. The older methods that were taught was that the rate limiting enzyme or the mitochondria, like your energy powerhouse of the cell, is actually a chromophore. It’s called cytochrome c-oxidase or CTO. And what that is, is the cytochrome system is it likes and absorbs certain wavelengths. And that kind of primes the pump to crank up the mitochondria though, but, but newer research is showing, we’re even moving beyond that. So now we’re getting into some of the realm of, you know, and this is going to get way too technical, but you want to think of almost like, you know, when they’re looking at the God particle, the Higgs Boson particle and what they’re finding out with quantum physics, that’s kind of where we’re getting in now, and how we’re all wave forms of activity. And our consciousness intersects that to make it a, you know, our existence of what our world is around us. So what we’re seeing with laser energy is it’s tapping into that quantum field activation. And that’s, that’s, you know, obviously, we could go on for 10 hours about quantum entanglement and string theory and quantum physics and all that, but just think of it that in that concept. But then as you get into, say, inflammation, then you start to say, “well, what are your main molecules that affect inflammation?” Nuclear factor kappa beta is the linchpin of all inflammatory cascades. And then it goes off into like Cox-2 and interleukin-6 and interleukin-1B and interleukin-17, all these things. Well, if you can regulate and change the output of those inflammatory cascades, then you can dampen inflammation.
Well, that’s the lasers do. Just think of it in simple terms, if you’ve got access nuclear factor Kappa Beta, because you’re maybe you’re dealing with a pathogen like cytomegalovirus. Or maybe you’re dealing with excess sugar intake or whatever, whatever’s causing that inflammation, if you can turn down that dial, well red lasers have been shown to be able to down regulate all those inflammation cascades. Red lasers have been shown to actually promote free radical undoing, just by doing the right Janus amount of nitric oxide synthase.
So, just like some exercise is good and it primes the pump for antioxidant systems for cellular metabolism for all those things, but too much will overwhelm the cell. It’s the exact same thing with laser, you know. When you’re in the right hormesis, the right dose, it promotes all the antioxidant systems because it actually promotes a nice reactive oxygen species. That’s actually how it kills off viruses and bacteria too. Just like you’ve heard of like, with certain epidemics that are happening and whatnot like terms like N-acetylcysteine, like your precursor for glutathione, is very effective in going after some of these pathogens, lasers in the exact same umbrella or under the exact same umbrella with that. But really just think of it in simple terms, like get that energy into the human body. So it can do all the things that it needs to repair itself. It’s just like chiropractic adjustments and things like that. When you have a healthy nervous system, it the magic happens when you unlock those keys, all those beautiful things that a healthy brain and healthy central nervous system can do with immunology with digestion, with inflammation with pathogens, and the list goes on and on that laser devices gives you that energy to do that.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, we were talking with docs, and this is a conversation that we’ve had at length, from our position and our vantage point, if that’s what you want to call it, it appears to both Dr. Wells and myself that this is where the conversation seems to be migrating further and further towards in the realm of you can call it functional medicine, functional neurology, you know, functional health in general. All these various groups seem to be tapping, and even outside of that, like various health practitioners in general, all seem to be scratching the surface at varying links of this concept of energetic healing energetic medicine, energetic strategies, we’ll just say that, you know. Whether that be light, sound, vibration, or a combination of those sorts of things. That seems to be from our perception, what seems to be a lot of the kind of cutting edge new direction things are going is that an accurate statement from your perspective?
Dr. Trevor Berry: I totally agree with that. And that, you know, have your listeners go to say, look at the work MIT is doing with 40 hertz frequency applications to the brain. Just flashing a 40 hertz visually evoked potential has been shown to reverse amyloid lagging, reverse neurofibrillary tangles, things like that. And that’s why when I teach my master brain setting, I teach 40 hertz is arguably one of the most important frequencies you can put into the human brain. How about, to your point with sound, binaural therapies, like where they inject, you know, different frequencies and your brain picks up the difference? 40 hertz is a huge one. 10 hertz is a big one for brain activity, parasympathetic modulation, things like that. We love one hertz frequency like that slow delta wave for sensory processing and subcortical and inter hemispheric integration.
So yeah, what like my master brain setting I include one hertz, 10 hertz, 40 hertz and 60 hertz because those are very important frequencies for brain activation. Because that’s kind of the cherry on top with your lasers, you can do various frequencies specific. One of the first researchers, I think that really paved the way for this was Royal Wright? If you look at Wright frequencies, like when he was using to take out pathogens and things like that, there’s different frequencies that different cells and molecule respond to. So yeah, you can get that deep into your, into your application. I’m big on, you know, again, that’s kind of the cherry on top, you know, if you got the right wavelength and dose, that’s the most important thing with lasers to the brain. But if you want to dive deep into like, you know, I have certain sleep frequencies, I have certain depression, you know. Like, for example, depression patients love a six hertz frequency to the right prefrontal cortex. So we’ll teach as advanced is like, okay, get your laser biases at the right prefrontal cortex and use 6-9-10, you know, as part of your application to get better outcomes with your depression patients. And, you know, I could go on for hours, like when my whole weekend talking about these advanced neural applications, but that’s to your point, you can get very specific with frequency applications.
Dr. Andrew Wells: What would you say to docs, I know, you trained doctors all over the country, maybe you’re all over the world who don’t have a diplomate in neurology and maybe don’t have your advanced training, what would you say to doctors who maybe are musculoskeletal based practitioners that maybe they have interest in getting into helping with some brain based protocols? Where would you advise them to? Is there like a starting point for that?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah. So that’s why I teach just your basic brain application. So I have naturopath, nurse practitioners, integrative medical docs, like I have every kind of specialty on my seminar, which is great, because we need everyone. This is neurodegeneration. We need everyone pulling in the same direction. Because if you look at the major killers in this country, they’re saying half of us now will die with a dementia diagnosis. That’s what the statistics are showing.
So my teaching point is this, I teach very advanced brain and body applications, but I also teach all of my attendees to just get the laser on the brain with the master brain setting with a base protocol, the prefrontal, apical, brainstem, cerebellum, vagal nerve stimulation, that’s it. Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, get that in there, and you’ve walked out with a successful seminar, everything else is just cherry on top. So even if you’re only treating low back pain, or left knee pain or whatever, I want all the attendees to have every family member and every patient to get brain applications with their lasers, so that we can confer protection and repair of all these patients that are walking into every single one of our offices. We’re all going through neurodegeneration, we’ve all had concussions, we’ve mild traumatic brain injury, we’ve all had dietary stuff, we’ve all had genetic, like we all have these things that need brain protection. So no matter if you’re treating their low back, my patients are still getting brain applications. And we talked about that last episode about swimming upstream, even for pain applications. But there is not a patient that walks out of my office that typically is not getting either a base brain application and a base vagal nerve stimulation. That’s it. That’s all you got to do. You don’t have to worry about is it in the right prefrontal? Are you doing, you know, left trigeminal, that doesn’t matter. Just get the laser on the brain at that nice safe dose that Erchonia has, and you’re going to confer protection and repair.
Dr. Andrew Wells: Now, Erchonia has several different models of lasers. And I think you mentioned on the last episode that you have nine going in your practice pretty much from the time you open your door to the time you close your doors. Maybe you can explain what actual devices you’re using and why.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, so my favorite lasers are their FX models. That’s the scanning, they have multiple rotating diodes that scan. So that makes it even easier if you’re just doing general brain application, you have the scanning diodes, it’s like a disco show going and just exposes their entire brain. And so you’re getting that nice coverage like that. Or let’s say you’re doing it over the gut or over a knee or over the low back.
So their FX 635 is the red scanning device. And that the new FX 405, which is my favorite laser of their whole stable, that’s got three red diodes plus of rotating a violet diode. And violet, we’re seeing with pain management, like we talked about that last episode, but on top of red, violet is one of your best things for anti-microbial. So you get all the benefits of like UV light like UVC. But violet in the visible spectrum at 405 nanometers is not damaging to mammalian cells. So unlike a sunburn or something. We all know sunlight, UV, like you go to these med spas and stuff. What do they put the instruments in? Under UV light. Well, if it’s in the visible spectrum, it doesn’t have the damaging effects of UVC. So the FX 405 and the FX 635 are amazing. But for a lot of docs that are in the field, they’re getting the EVRL which is the violet and red handle. That’s what it stands for Erchonia Violet Red Light, or laser. And that’s the most common one that most docs, and even my patient base use.
You know, again, with all the epidemic stuff, a lot of the pathogens, like you know, for example, they use in COVID models, and again not to get into, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble saying they’re treating COVID or not saying that, but there’s FDA studies showing that your violet and red lasers have been effectively used to go after pathogens like RNA replicating pathogens like COVID models. 54% kill rate with the violet rate laser, for example. So, you know, so we use that, but the handhelds their entry level one is just the base red one is called the XLR8. And we also have the Zerona, the body contouring laser in our office as well. We have a PL-Touch but that’s they’re not making that anymore. So what I’m really diggin doctors that are doing, they have a base station where you can get three of the handhelds. And what we’re doing and what a lot of doctors are doing is they have two of the handhelds going in their office, but they rent the third one out and what that’s doing is paying for all their laser devices but more importantly, it’s more for the patients. You know, say they’re stuck at home with a pathogen. Say they’re stuck at home with a knee operation. They rent the laser out for a week or two weeks or whatever. It’s generating passive revenue for the doctors and the patients get the benefits of getting treated every day at the comfort of their own home.
Dr. Andrew Wells: Wow! Is there anything that you want to add, so this episode we’re talking about brain health, are we, are we missing anything in terms of where the where the puck is moving and in terms of brain health? Is there anything that you can add to that? Like, where’s this headed?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Well, when you look at like, even what they’re saying, with Alzheimer’s. It’s actually, you know, some studies say it’s six different conditions, some studies are saying it’s a inflammation based condition, which can be food infection things like that, some studies are saying it’s an autoimmune condition. Well, to regulate the autoimmune system, so it doesn’t overshoot like with th-1, th-2, th-17, those are all technical terms. But when you have an immune response, a big topic we should talk about briefly as your barrier systems. We’re having gut and blood brain barrier disruption, like nobody’s business these days, based on foods based on trauma, based on toxins in our system, stress, high blood, all these things that cause various system disruption. Stuff’s getting into the brain like pathogens that shouldn’t be in there. So you better have something that can attack the pathogen, and regulate the immune response.
Well lasering, the brain will do that. Lasers have been shown to go after cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus, Epstein Barr Virus, like with multiple sclerosis, and do the repair that epstein barr molecular mimicry does with emit. So pathogens is another big thing you have to be able to address. But alongside that is that immune regulation, so you have proper immune responses and turning down the dial. And the cherry on top is laser in the brain and the vagus nerve will actually repair the blood brain barrier, as well as doing it over the gut and the vagus nerve will repair the gut barrier as one of the methods.
So you have to have that integrative approach to be able to check off a lot of boxes, antioxidant inflammation, pathogens, blood flow, mitochondria, new pathway formation, new nerve formation, undo damage to neurons with amyloid plaques. So lasers technically can check off every single box if it’s in the right dose under that 13% of your square. So I think to your point, to kind of simplify that answer is that if you, no matter what your training is, you have to have all this functional neuro stuff like that, just know that intrinsic to your savior Erchonia device, all most major things, other than not putting that doughnut back into your mouth and other than not whacking your head on the football field, lasers will will kind of be the great equalizer to come in behind all that damage that we’re doing to our brain and help repair it just by getting that laser energy on the brain. So now you’ve got a homerun, even if you don’t know a thing about neurology,
Dr. Chad Woolner: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall hearing they’re trying to now create a new designation of a type three diabetes, for brain. Is that correct? That’s what you were alluding to?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, so one of the things that happens with excess sugar in our diet, is we start taking off that amyloid precursor protein. One of the mechanisms for that, when you hear those plaques on the brain, what’s one of your earlier warning signs about, like they even have an FDA clearance study now when they look at amyloid 142 and 40 ratios, which are two of the big ones with brain based plaqing, one of the mechanisms that sugar starts ticking off that amyloid plaque too much. So that plaque that was those ligaments of amyloid start to build up. And normally your glial systems taking those out, like taking out the garbage, but it competes with the binding site, so that the glial cells can’t take out the garbage.
So those plaques build up on the outside and start to junk up or clog up the ability for neurons to communicate and do those things. So that’s one of the things. Now one of the areas where pharmaceuticals that you’ve probably heard about Biogen with Agile health, that was a disaster. It was the first ever FDA cleared drug to treat Alzheimer’s, well, technically, it didn’t treat Alzheimer’s, it was going after the plaque. Well, that’s only a small part of the equation. I’m not dismissing out the plaquing but to your point, sugar is a big cover with that. The other thing is the pathogens, because some of the newer research is showing if I say Epstein Barr or Herpes Simplex or something in my brain, guess what your brain is trying to do to trap the pathogen, it puts that plaque out like a jail cell in simple terms of trying to do that. So either way, you want to do stuff to either mitigate the pathogen or get that sugar out of your diet so that it doesn’t get that type 3 diabetes.
Dr. Chad Woolner: It’s such a similar pattern that we see everywhere else in the body, like with the whole cholesterol story, right? They never address what’s driving the cholesterol in the first place. When you have damage to endothelial cells that the body is going to send cholesterol to patch the walls. It’s the same sort of thing. It’s the body’s just doing what it’s supposed to do. You know, you’re just they’re just ignoring it. And you know, yeah, it’s crazy.
Dr. Trevor Berry: Exactly. And you bring up a great point with that because it’s the oxidized cholesterol and the damage you know like free radicals like homocysteine. Why is that not on every lab test in America? Homocysteine, not only does it damage the endothelial but it also makes your brain neurons go poof.
Dr. Andrew Wells: You have to have a bit of an integrative approach, right? Because some of my neurodegeneration cases are more food based like type three diabetes with sugar and that kind of thing. Some of its more pathogens, things like that. Well, one of the big things there’s not a pharmaceutical that’s ever going to be able to check off all the boxes. Good luck trying to design something that deals with autoimmunity, deals with inflammation, deals like there’s just way too many variables. But on the flip side, your lasers, as you’re hearing from these podcasts are very versatile to check off most of the boxes of the major boxes that are needed.
So unfortunately, because of the, you know, the pharmaceutical dogma, if you will, you know, they’re kind of stuck in that old model of, “Well, is there a surgery that can undo dementia?” No, there’s not. They can’t do anything about that. “Is our pharmaceutical is gonna check off all the boxes ?” No, it’s not. I really like the work Dale Bredesen is doing out of UCLA, you know, he’s doing some very cutting edge work. And he’s a medical doctor, you know, have research on this. And talking about how, you know, you want to take this integrative approach, like we’ve been talking about the last hour. And what was neat is I just did an event in Orlando, and one of his cohorts that he collaborates with in research was Dr. Tanya was a medical doctor. You know, they had all the dietary stuff they talked about and being like gluten free, dairy free, low carbs, they talk about nutrition that’s good for the brain. Well, for the first time ever, I heard those groups talking about low level laser therapy, and photobiomodulation, which was music to my ears. I was like sweet, some of the top medical researchers on the reversal of Alzheimers are now talking about light therapies on the brain being an effective tool. And so I just happen to be at the right place at the right time, you know, over a decade ago kind of spearheading this movement, but it’s kind of neat that it is getting a little bit more mainstream and the understanding and what not. The literature there. There’s the 10s of 1000s, like there’s, like I said in the last one, there’s about 11,000 papers. And so it’s not that it’s lacking in research applications and evidence, empirical evidence, it’s just that it’s not being looked at, you know, there’s not too many doctors out there. In especially in the hardcore Western medicine community that you’ve even heard of lasering the brain. That’s part of my goal, and why I love getting the medical community at my seminars, because they see the research and they see the application like wow, this is actually, you know, legitimate game changers, right?
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, I would say better late than never. And that’s more often the case I was there was a review that was done in, I’m looking at it here Institute of Public Health University of Cambridge, and the title says enough. It says, “The answer is 17 years. What is the question? Understanding time lags in translational research.” And so the problem that we’re talking about, here’s the same problem that we tend to see. And we’ve talked about this, I think, in previous podcast episodes, is that there’s just always these lags. And so that’s the cool thing is that you’ve kind of got your finger on the pulse of what’s current, and what’s, you know, what’s what’s really relevant now for really getting the best results with patients, which is really really got to be exciting. So I know we could talk for hours and hours on on this and dive even deeper. And again, I’m sure we will have future episodes. But any final thoughts in closing for doc’s who are maybe interested or excited about this topic? Anywhere else? Any final kind of closing remarks?
Dr. Trevor Berry: Yeah, so I think a good good starting point where if you can get the one of the seminars or like we’re streaming worldwide now with events, things like that, if they go to Erchonia.com, they can see all of my and look my name up on the on the events list, you can you can go to any of the seminars or see here I’m going to be all throughout North America. And like you said Wool, I’m going to be back in Europe this year. My website is AZCairoNeuro.com. And you can get more information about how we do the integrative approach here in my office. But I just really hope the doctors listening know, whatever their practice specialty is, lasers can be a beneficial tool, whether it’s pain management, orthopedic sports, performance, whatever. But I really am trying to endorse it and promote all doctors and they get this laser, the Erchonia laser technology on the brains of all their family members themselves, their patients. The longer your brains working better, the better you no longer be able to practice and serve others and help humankind and the more people we get on this train, the more we can finally start to curb this this scary trajectory of neurodegeneration in this country. And so that’s why I teach base brain applications so that doctors don’t feel like, “oh, this is way too complicated for me.” Every doctor that I teach can turn on the laser, can have their preset settings in there, hit one button and point the laser at the brain, like it can literally be as simple as that. So I really hope all the doctors that make that investment in their own brains are buying and investing in lasers for their own family, their own personal use, and then just apply it to every patient that’s coming through the doors, because the demand is there. I always tell doctors serving your patients, “how many of them would want to be interested in preventing, like things like Alzheimer’s, like dementia?” And there’s not too many people that aren’t going to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I definitely want to have that capacity.” And so it just provides a nice monotherapeutic modality to check off a lot of the boxes. So it’s definitely a worthy investment. And I really hope more doctors are, are getting that information and applying that in their practice.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, well said. I can’t help but think, I know this is gonna sound kind of corny, but my wife and I, we watch that show, “This is Us” on, I think it’s on NBC, we watch on Hulu, but they’re nearing the end of the season. And it’s following the life of this mother in this whole family, but she’s dying from some type of neurodegenerative, Alzheimer’s type issue. And then we’re at the near final episode where she passes away. And it’s sad because you get to know these characters but even though this is fictional, it’s a fictional story, this is people’s story all the time, you know, clearly like this is what we’re dealing with. And so it’s fairly touching, you know, and it starts getting you thinking, at least it does me. You know, I’m 42 years old, and I care about being around a lot longer for my kids, and hopefully, their kids and their kid’s kids. And so what you’re talking about here is extremely relevant to all of us. And so hopefully, again, docs will take that to heart. Hopefully, this will ignite an excitement within them to want to dig in a little bit deeper and start incorporating these tools in their practices to help more patients. So again, huge thank you, Dr. Berry for your time, and we really appreciate your expertise and sharing, sharing that with us and we hope that this will help change a lot of people’s lives.
Dr. Trevor Berry: And thank you guys. You’re doing a great job sharing the message. You’re really an honor to be on. Hopefully anytime you guys want me back on, we’ll keep exploring these different topics. But thank you for helping get that information out there. I’d be happy to be back anytime.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Absolutely, absolutely. For sure. So docs, thanks for listening. Share this with those that you feel could benefit from it, and we will talk to you on the next episode.
Thanks for listening to The Laser Light show, be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about Erchonia lasers just head on over to Erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as Erchonia’s e-community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.
