Podcast Episode #8: Low Level Laser Therapy for Low Back Pain with Dr. Trevor Berry

On today’s episode we dig in deep on the subject of low level laser therapy for low back pain with Dr. Trevor Berry.  Dr. Berry shares some incredible insights on low back pain, pain in general and the neurological basis for using lasers as part of any treatment protocol for patients struggling with low back pain.  To learn more about Dr. Berry or to attend one of his upcoming trainings you can check out more here: https://azchironeuro.com/ or here:

https://www.erchonia.com/seminars/

Transcript:

Dr. Chad Woolner: All right everybody, welcome to the show. This is episode 8 of the laser light show and on today’s episode we have special guest Dr. Trevor Barry, he’s gonna be talking about low level laser therapy for back pain, so let’s get 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.

Dr. Chad Woolner: All right everybody, welcome to the show and a special welcome to Dr. Trevor Barry. Thank you so much for being here with us. Good to have you here. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: My pleasure, absolute pleasure! Looking forward to it!

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah so maybe a good first place to start is just to tell us a little bit about yourself. I think this is the first time you and I have officially met ‘virtually’ , so fill us in, give us a quick snapshot of who you are, your kind of affiliation with Erchnoia and your story with low level lasers.

Dr. Trevor Barry: Yeah, sounds good. So I went to school at Parker in Dallas and I really got into neurology early on. I became a board certified diplomatic neurologist and then I kept branching out into functional meds that required a lot of work with an F&S. I’ve had some really good mentors out there that really brought me to become an integrative practitioner. You know coming at brain-based solutions for all kinds of complex, neurological conditions and early on in the laser introduction. If you will, I actually got into lasers as you know, it’s like doctors do for self-help stuff. I have really bad sciatica arthritis and my family and things like that but then it became a labor of love with regards to protecting my daughters. I have two daughters and their mom, my ex, has a severe genetic predilection for Alzheimer’s and so I was looking at ways that I could effectively protect them from neurodegenerative changes and it became very apparent about how low-level laser could be utilized in that basket, but as the research continues to expand upward. What about 11,000 papers now on peer-reviewed index literature on laser as you guys know it has become basically the most important mono therapy. I think positions can add to their practice and even patients alike. I’m having tons of patients buy lasers for their own use at home so the main thing for me that as I drove into the literature became very apparent that as all the good things lasers could do for the brain and body. There was really once caveat of this almost too good to be true mindset and that was that you needed to have the right dose and as a brain based guy, it was very obvious that all the literature supports you wanted to be below typically no more than 13 joules per centimeter squared to the central nervous system. So, I know that’s kind of great for most people but it just means that low level laser is the most important thing so when I was looking at devices, I was going to shine on my daughter’s brains to protect, absolutely. So we started to cultivate a relationship and as they got to know what I did with all the neural based rehab and when not they said, hey we want to have you come speak and do some events and it just blossomed from there.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Actually, that’s amazing. How many seminars do you do for them?

Dr. Trevor Barry: I think this year I have about 18 events on my calendar so I think the most I’ve ever done is about 24, but with some of the changes with code and now what you need is that we’re actually doing a lot of streaming events worldwide now, so okay that gives you a lot of docs. You know, not wanting to travel because of safety issues or maybe can’t make a seminar, it allows them. Like, I just did one last week, an important one in Portland and Maine that we streamed worldwide so that’s awesome!

Dr. Andrew Wells: That’s amazing! Yeah, very cool. I’m really fascinated to hear what you’re doing with your daughters because I think having a proactive approach to preventing severe and deadly neurodegenerative conditions is really fascinating so that’s just for listeners but that’s in two more episodes. That’s episode number 10. I can’t wait to dive into that, but we wanted to focus today on back pain, lower back pain, even neck pain, and really help us understand the mechanism of action and how not only from a physiological way what low level laser technology is doing for back pain but also you’re a doc in the trenches. You’re seeing patients, you’re using this in your clinic, we really wanted to give our listeners some real life applications for how they use this to help more people in their clinic.

Dr. Trevor Barry: Perfect.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Can I selfishly interject real quick because I’m gonna put a point on this real quick that I think might steer this conversation in an interesting way. So, I live in Idaho, my parents live in Salem, Portland Oregon, we’ll just call it Portland area for the sake of simplicity. My mother has been dealing with back pain for the past, I don’t know for three or four months, really debilitating back pain. She’s been to a chiropractor. Had a decent experience there. Actually, I should say she’s been to two chiropractors. One, not a great experience. The other, decent experience. She’s been to PT. She’s done acupuncture, gotten some relief from acupuncture but still struggling with it right. My daughter is going to be visiting them and obviously you understand the inherent challenge that I’m facing. The dilemma. I feel like we’ve got cool stuff that we can do at our clinic including lasers but we’re gonna be visiting them briefly and then they’re gonna be coming and bringing my daughter back this summer and I’m gonna have a span of four or five days, maybe a little bit more to do some cool things with these Erchonia lasers. So I’m gonna say let’s talk about back pain, but maybe at some point weave it into terms like okay, you got four. They work with the patient but share with us exactly what his question was but somewhere somehow weave into it like if you were me and your mom was there with you. What would do for her back pain in that situation? Alright go!

Dr. Trevor Barry: I think one of the interesting things with lasers is that there’s a cumulative effect and because their colony devices are so safe and well underneath that safety zone of laser therapy. For example, my last patient that just walked out here flew to see me from Wisconsin. So, she flew in for the week doing intense therapy. We saw her with a laser three times a day so you can actually stack your therapies and do more than one in one visit on a day to day basis. I take my lasers home every night and I work on myself, my family members, things like that. So, it is something that you can safely get you know exposure every day when we did the low backs that I was the principal investigator of the chronic back study and we did eight visits now that was spread out over a couple of weeks, but it’s perfectly fine, safe, and effective to do lasers in a stack way like that. Either once a day or a couple of times a day, especially the right dose involved and what I thought was interesting in the field of neurology is that when you look at what makes pain chronic you know it’s one thing to treat acute, you know the research is very robust on acute injuries brain strains, disc, whatever the sources, but the case we were using for the study was a minimum. There are certain amounts of time to be chronic, over a three month period then it’s not longer just the tissue damage in the inflammation. At that point, you start to get this whole reorganization of the peripheral and a central nervous system to adapt to that and so that was the interesting thing to be able to overcome that with laser just local to the tissue was a big thing, and I’ll get into the neurology of pain and how it changes brain activity and a whole wide dynamic range neurons that the spinal cord level things like that. So, let’s just go back to the initial understanding of how pain works. So, your patients are gonna have maybe a band life and twist or some common injury like that. Just knowing back pain, by the way, is the most common form of pain according to the NIH (National Institute of Health). You guys have seen the studies about how over 80% of people at any given time will experience low back pain over 20% it will be chronic so it’s more than months on end and so what you have to look at is what happens first and are you supposed to have this inflammatory response and that inflammation? There’s all these things like calcetone and gene related peptide and substance P and B [INAUDIBLE] all these chemicals and they called it inflammation soup. One of the interesting things that the research is showing is part of that inflammation soup, is it actually an immune mediated response you’re actually even getting in a disc injury or a muscle pair or something like that you actually get your neutrophils and like your leukocytes come into the area too approach it and that does so through inflammatory my goals called things like the interlukes like you may have heard the term inner luke and six. For example, this is a big player in both acute inflammation but also chronic pain because one of the things where modalities fail or even actually make that pain situation worse is when you shut off certain inflammatory cascade the classic example of this and I was just reading a research paper this morning in Canada saying that if you use NSAIDs like Advil and Aleve. All you’re doing is shutting off that Cox 2 pathway across the gland and E2, but the inner luke is like interleukin 6 are still allowed to infiltrate the area and in doing so that causes scar tissue by roses adhesions and chronic pain, inflammation, cascades. So, actually taking NSAIDs like that can actually make your risk of getting chronic pain even worse if you do it in acute and that’s completely against the paradigm of what most patients and doctors alike. Getting on Advil or some sort of pharmacology could actually be doing the patient more harm than good. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Can I interject real quick, is that because of the Cox enzymes not in as part of the equation and now the interleukins like there’s an imbalance there in terms of that inflammatory cascade is that what you’re saying exactly you need in modalities?

Dr. Trevor Barry: They’re actually going to need inflammation. I want doctors and patients alike to know we need information whether it’s with pathogens, whether with acute injury because we have to fight off the bad guys, right? You know if you have a cut you need that inflammation to make sure you don’t get a septic infection or something like that, but what most patients suffer from, especially chronic pain, is that and long hauler whatever like chronic condition of pathogens or injuries that is the pain doesn’t get shut off properly. So what you need and what this is one of the amazing things about lasers, especially red lasers is what research has shown. They will shut off the Cox 2 system like an Advil. Will they shut off inner Luke and 6 interlude and 1b interlude and 17 interleukin 23 TNF alpha. So, all these inflammation chemicals as part of that inflammation soup will dial down and actually start to regulate that and the main immune part. The main part of the immune system is called the T-Rex system and that you use the compounds like TGF, beta and Interleukin and 10 to actually tell the immune system, okay, you did your job now come back to the station because you’ve already done everything we need you to put out that fire. So, this is how we do modalities, in that there are certain nutrients that will help do that, but low level lasers do all of that for you. It’ll actually inhibit the inflammatory cascade and promote immuno-resolution like interlude and TGF beta  and the inflammatory response. Okay, you can calm down now and turn down the dial so that really comes into play on more of the local tissue exposure. Another interesting topic about chronic pain is that we have these types of nauseous stuff there that are like lightly myelinated, they calm free nerves and they’re ubiquitous throughout the entire body and they’re all over. They’re always monitoring those pains and inflammation mechanisms to tell you, hey somethings wrong here. Their job is to tell you something’s wrong, quit loading the disc, that kind of stuff so what we’re also finding with chronic pain is actually that’s the first stage of what we call the peripheral pain. Synthesization is all those channels that are taking those inflammatory soup chemicals in and tell you that something’s wrong. Some of them are called TRPV TRPM acid sensitizing channels. All these channels you have all over those receptors that are taking in that inflammation you want to use products that actually can lay all those channels in chronic pain. Cannabinoids do a good job like when you hear about tropical CBD for example, that does a good job of downrigging regulating. There’s another topical product one of my colleagues did that does a really good job of down-regulating all that well. Once again, lasers have been shown to actually be able to turn off all those channels because some of them only get turned off by heat products, you know. Cap station products hot pack things like that. You know your menthol products and cold facts but the big one that gets missed is the acidizing channel and if you can make that area more alkaline and turn off that asick receptor. That’s a home run for the peripheral sensitization that lasers will do and because those fibers are typically very superficial you don’t like, I’ll go into the depth penetration when we talk about the brains. But one of the most overstated things in laser physiology is the depth of penetration. It’s a dynamic energy thing, but most of your pain stuff is superficially medicated anyway. So, it’s not about, does the laser get to the disc? does it get to wherever the deep tissue is? I’m not saying the lasers don’t do that, but that is probably the most overstated thing and laser physiology both for neurology and pain. So, then let’s say we’re at the peripheral part of the chronic pain is being able to down regulate all that stuff. That’s what I love about Erchonia effects because not only do they have the line being first generation that patented landed line will cover more surface area, but those scanning diodes that we use the FX 635 in the chronic back study and it’s all those colonial nerves and things like that all around that gluten sacral area that you need to be able to bathe with that laser light to down regulate and turn off that dial. Well, that FX35 in the new 405 does exactly that, it covers all that surface area that you need so your staff can set it and forget it like when we did our laser study. We didn’t move the laser around just there in those key spots in the low back and in that gluteal trochanteric area. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: I want to interject here for a couple seconds. Yeah, does that need to be directly on skin? Can it be done through clothes if it’s close? Let us know how that happens.

Dr. Trevor Barry: Great question. So, I like the analogy that it’s a very polarizing topic in laser therapy.They’ll say, don’t you dare try and go through clothes, and that kind of thing. One of the first studies I ever asked the company to do was take their basic handheld. They’re basic accelerated lasers, the red laser 7.5 milliwatt dies. They said show me a transcranial study and I’ll get more into that in the next podcast but they showed in real time, in functioning imaging you study there. They’re 7.5 million watt diodes penetrating the skull, the lasers will literally penetrate the skull, so you know one of the take-up points. Yes, it’ll go through clothes. I have very pragmatic conversations with my doctors and say, listen, I have dark clothes like dark blue things like that and get directly on the skin. You might as well try and get the optimal absorption possible. It will go through clothes but it’s kind of like a mesh fence or something if I’m shooting the light through there. Some of the fence will absorb the laser energy, but most of it’s getting through the fence right and getting to the tissue but why not try and get directly on the skin if it’s possible, if that’s available you can do it modestly. That’s always the go-to on that other cool thing you bring up. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, good point. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: That is because these lasers are non-thermal. They’re not creating a heat load like high-powered. Lasers you know a lot of your patients have those tattoos on the low back there and most light devices are higher, powered 3bs and force you can’t shine over a tattoo because you’ll burn the patient. With Erchonia products, you can go directly over a tattoo and not have any issues with it and then we can get more into things like retinal exposure and things like that, but that’s for different conversations. So, yeah, to your point, if you can get directly on the skin, well go for it. If not, then don’t worry you’re still gonna get an absorbent. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s awesome. Yeah, the thought I had when you originally talked about this was you originally started talking about the clocks too inhibiting from the insides. My mind couldn’t help but think that was kind of part of the problem that we ran into with the whole celebrex situation when they started kind of trying to monkey around with the selective. You know clocks inhibition with those and that was what led to. I just think sometimes in general this might sound like a gross oversimplification but sometimes when we start trying to monkey around with mother nature, we tend to screw things up pretty significantly and that’s one of the things that’s so cool about lasers. We’ve kind of talked about in the previous episode if there’s something so inherently natural about light. We get to step out of the sun. It’s inherently therapeutic, you know our body was meant to absorb that love of the light. It does wonderful things for us in terms of vitamin D and no doubt other things as well and so these lasers, there’s no downside to it. But, in terms of that, if I’m understanding correctly, what you’re basically saying is they’re finding that insides in a similar fashion. Will you start targeting and trying to monkey around with that inflammatory cascade by trying to do this sniper approach? It has unintended consequences associated with it. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: You hit the nail on the head pretty much. It’s like even aspirin by itself is a fairly benign and yeah effective substance, but when bears couldn’t patent it so they had to put a man-made molecule to patent it and when they did so it started causing severe stomach aches and life-threatening bleeds like that so yeah you’re right. Anytime we attach something to a structure man-made synthetic, it usually messes with it. Same thing with neural chemistry. That’s another big thing once we start messing with our eyes and things like that and we wreak havoc in unintended consequences inside effects. So, I love your point like where we get so indoctrinated in the chemical model because of pharma and things like that in this country, but the other half of the equation we are energy beings. You know, our electrical communication or cellular system. Our nervous system is based on electrical communication. I’m not saying there’s not a chemical  component to it, but the most underutilized thing in healthcare is energy. You know that with electrical activity we can get into quantum entanglement and quantum fields and that kind of stuff but getting proper laser energy and frequencies all that into the human body is an amazing thing. And, that’s why I told that even in pain suffering, maybe back pain or shoulder pain or something you can get effectiveness of lasers by shining the laser on the left knee, not even related to the shoulder angle, the injury and have the effective anti-inflammatory pain modulating and systemic effect with blood. You know mass in our systems, and things like that, and getting bigger models of quantum entanglements so there’s just something about getting proper light on and off a patient or even to your point of sunlight. You know, there are some pilots that showed getting red laser on diabetic neuropathies in cream cheese, magnesium, and vitamin D levels. Not even having anything to do with sun exposure, so it’s kind of neat to watch those kinds of things be affected by lasers and all your inflammatory cascades as well. Not like we’re talking about it but I always like when docs do free post inflammation marker studies with CRP and said rates and you know things  like that because you’ll see amazing results with your lasers about down regulating systemic inflammation just by getting lasers that are gut-based. Lasers like Erchonia for body contouring or the pain lasers or nervous system-based stuff. So, a good thing to do with doctors is look at lipid panels, look at inflammation panels, and things like that and do free post objective measures. Obviously, it’s about making the patients feel better and back to quality of life like, hey I can pick up my grandkid again or hey, I can play golf again. That’s number one to us. Each study physiology and neurology, we like seeing hey look at your CRP went down 50% because of your laser treatment. So, just something to put out there for the docs. But you know, back to the application that most of your patients like when we did the low back study with the FX635. It was set and forget it [INAUDIBLE]. And then I start teaching the upstream model of laser application because then you get into what are the other areas that you can inhibit pain because pain as we talked about takes on a central reorganization where your spinal cord pathways start to change, your brain pathways start to change, your brainstempathic, all that change to adapt. We need that when we’re learning a new golf swing or learning a new language or whatever we want with those adaptive changes. Unfortunately, it works that way with any neurological stimulus. So, what your nervous system is doing well you’re gonna be in chronic pain, I’m going to adapt to it and become more efficient at it. So, the next big project I talk about is getting upstream and is this a good clinical gem? What are called these wide dynamic range in neurons in the dorsal horn of your spinal cord so painful pain comes in and its job is to basically, in simple terms, crank up the dial and say hey, you’re in pain you need to get rid of this. I’m gonna make sure you know about this. I got that dial and started to really get the central reorganization. That’s what the dorsal horn spinal cord change is actually based on glutamate receptors that’s your excitatory neurotransmitter and you have this glute five receptor at that wide dynamic range they’re on that’s telling it to become more receptive or responsive to it. Well one interesting research that we came across showed that violet laser 405 nanometer, that violet spectrum, actually turns down that glutamate receptor at the spinal cord level so that’s why you’re seeing a nice cherry on top like most of the studies are based on pain. But, you’re also seeing studies that’s a violet-red combination so a lot of the….

Dr. Chad Woolner: Let me interrupt real quick there because I’m recalling our neurophysiology days. Dr. Gillett who taught our neurophysiology. He was a really renowned neurophysiologist but the one thing I remember, and I don’t remember much, but I do remember him teaching what caused cells that fire together wire together, right? That’s what literally glued those cells together, and so if I’m hearing what you’re saying correctly, the violet will prevent the wiring together, or at least help to ratchet that down so that it doesn’t become an acute potential situation doesn’t become chronic or a chronic situation. Maybe potentially, I don’t know what the right terminology is but preventing that breaking up that pattern in essence is a good way of life. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: That’s well said, so just taking that glutamate dial that was in your nervous system is cranking others saying no nothell breaks. Let’s turn that back down and regulate that so it’s not overactive so when I use my violet-red combo, I out the violet part of the beam right on the spinal cord and I out the red on the nerve roots adjacent to it so that you can get an effective treatment and I don’t want the darkening. You know violet is one that most doctors are the violet-red combo. I just did that event. I think I had 20 something darker. I violet-red laser in my last event in Portland, Main there because if you’re gonna laser like they did the neck and shoulder study that one of your documents had talked about, one treatment of violet-red was over 30% reduction in visual. In visuals, the 30 point reduction visual analog scale and improved range of motion and pain two days later just with one treatment of the violet-red for neck and shoulders so that’s a cherry on top. As far as adding you know when we’re always trying to up our game and level up with our treatments and so yes, to your point, it will help create that like down regulating, calm the glutamate system down like, hey don’t fire too hard now. You’re talking about Peter Gillette, that was his name.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yes, yes yes yes.

Dr. Trevor Barry: You know he’s from Canada. All the good docs come from there, I grew up in Calgary Alberta. So as we continue to swim upstream another bigger take on pain management is Vagus nerve  stimulation. The Vagus nerve is a game changer used in epilepsy and neurodegeneration traumatic brain injury cancers, you know Vagus nerve  stimulation  is an absolute game changer for patients that have brain gut axis leaky barrier systems that are involved. And that’s something we should probably try and catch at the end is systemic inflammation adding to chronic pain sufferers like back pain. It would not because if you can address those systemic inflammatory things like leaky gut with bagel nerve stimulation, you’ve got another layer of a home run here well, just with pain and the seamy and systemic and inflammation studies show laser well. We did studies that hate our heart rate variability lasering the Vagus nerve causing parasympathetic promotion motion so we’re using that upstream. Hey, if your set and forget it approach doesn’t quite get your targeted things then we go up to the spinal cord nerve root. Then we go to Vagus nerve  stimulation. Then we go to the parietal lobe for some metatropic reorganization and then we even get into the limbic responses of pain like when they talk about cognitive behavioral therapies. Like patients develop a fear and emotional response and all those things with pain. You can actually use your lasers to down regulate that default mode network and salience, so they’re not not having as much of that by fight or flight limbic like just thought of them sitting down or bending gets their heart rate up and you get them like intense and things like that, so we actually use lasers all the way upstream to affect central mechanisms just as well as we do the set it and forget it to the local tissue.

Dr. Andrew Wells: So what happens, Dr. Barry, if you started with, let’s say a patient came with lower back pain. What if you started with the central nervous system, started with the brain and worked backward. Have you ever tried that?

Dr. Trevor Barry: Now you’re speaking my language my friend. So, I teach the upstream approach, my favorite being a brain neuro guy. I actually start with your downstream approach so another good clinical nugget is what would they say they’ve got? Let’s say shoulder pain. You know what, let’s talk about right SI pain. For example, one of the things I’ll start with is, I actually laser the parietal lobe to start to downregulate the gliosis that’s happening, the reorganization of the things help get the system to a higher level of function at the same time. Have your docs do vibration over the target tissue so we use like their cognitive percussor. For example, that’s a really good vibration device because that starts to help remap and get the nerve. Say you’ve had chronic pain and you’re not right, outside joints are not moving properly and things like that, your parietal lobe. You’re still out of topic. The cortex will start to reorganize to adapt to this as well. You know if you’re not gonna move right or not gonna move at all. I’m just gonna adapt to that and change my firing pattern up here. So what we do is, we do vibration on the local tissue. Whether it’s an elbow, a shoulder and SI joint blue, whatever and laser the parietal, but at the same time start to tell the brain, wait a minute here, I forgot about that joint. It’s been stuck for so long or whatever, I need to start paying attention to that again. Then what we do is laser the cerebellum and start to move the joint complex like in a complex pattern for example and start to reorganize the firing where the brain can start to properly localize and coordinate the proper step of feedback or the position sense where it is in space. I think, oh, I forgot that the joint can move. I forgot it can move like that. I forgot. It’s best to move like that and so you start taking that downstream approach of reorganizing and waking the brain up basically and then at the end you laser the target tissue. The SI joint, the shoulder, the elbow, or whatever it is, and I love that that’s actually my go-to right out of the gate, but because not a lot of docs do that. You know doctors treat a lot of brain-based stuff, but you know as a functional neurologist, it was not. We also take a brain-centric approach first and swim downstream so that way you said is actually brilliant. It’s such a good clinical way. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: I was gonna ask you real quick. Sorry, didn’t you say stimulating the Vagus straight on the neck side of the neck mastoid area? Where do you typically target that?

Dr. Trevor Barry: Great question, so one collection was actually the one that did that pilot study with you and what we do is a heart rate variability testing in our office and that’s one of your most objective biomarkers: a person, pathetic and sympathetic function and things like that. So, what he did in real time was put the red laser just right on the SPM for 10 minutes and showed that with the red laser you increased parasympathetic high frequency activity of heart rate variability. Violet laser actually promoted sympathetic toning but that was just shining it where the vagus nerve runs right along the sternocleidomastoid. Now, I teach and some of the other docs teach, I’m fine with doing brains exposure and then wrapping around to the SDM and then just following that down and one of the big things I teach is, you’ll see, I laser right over the gut because as you know the Vagus, that goes all the way down to control like what way down this planet, down in that area and then the bottom half gets taken over by the nerve-wire gentees. You’re pelvic flight. Yeah, that’s two, three, four stuff for the autonomic parasympathetic down there. So, we love to blanket the whole area, but for the sake of simplicity for your listeners, they did it right on the STM. That was it for 10 minutes. You can even do shorter treatment times and have good objective outcomes. But, I do a couple minutes on the STM, a couple minutes right over the gut and for good measure, I’ll actually vibrate the gut too. I’ll actually do a mechanical vibration  for those special visual aprons and that is a fair component of vehicle nurse simulation as well. Obviously I’ve done all my palpitation and oscillation. Make sure there’s no contraindications to that so you can laser right on the STM. You can follow the whole pathway from the brainstem, go right over the gut and there’s even branches like when you laser the prefrontal cortex that will actually promote parasympathetic modulation. When there’s an irregular brand, it goes to the ear. You can do that like a lot of acupuncturists happen to do in different modalities, so we’ll actually even laser right on the irregular brand. We’ll go back to the throat stuff for all [INAUDIBLE] toning and palpables and what have you, but yes for simplicity go right on the STM. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: What it won’t see, the doctor, doesn’t have a diplomatic neurology that may be what we’re talking about here. Scary reminders of board review, like yeah, they’re thinking, Hey! This sounds amazing! This sounds like an amazing tool, a powerful tool that they can use but they don’t remember these nerve pathways. This may sound a little foreign to them, what would you say to adapt like that?

Dr. Trevor Barry: So, going right into it, right into the narrow side? I think one of the things I’ll say in the first hour of my seminars is all right everyone, grab your laser, then you turn it on, yes it’s on. Can you point to the prefrontal cortex? They all point right above. They’re in there for it. Can you point to you? Let’s go to bonus questions. Can you point to your right prefrontal cortex? I’ll move their hand over one inch, turn the laser on, and point it right out your right prefrontal cortex, can you hold it there? I said congratulations, now you’re all board certified neurologists because if you can just know basic anatomy, I know where the spinal climate masturbate is, I know that the Vagus runs right there. I know I can just point and that I won’t forget it. Keep it simple. Like, I even teach one master brain frequency setting for the central nervous system that we’ll get into on the next podcast but so it’s as simple as that then with the peripheral tissue. Most of the candidates that are going to get laser it’s there. You don’t have to do anything, most of your patients are going to respond to just getting the laser on the left knee, set it and forget it. Your staff does it. All they had to know was okay, there’s my pain setting. It’s all pre-programmed in the laser, you hit one button and you put the stand right there or the FX right there, you set it and forget it. All done advanced neural upstream stuff is just bonus material so it’s why I don’t want doctors to get you know, paralysis by analysis kind of thing. I want them to just say, hey the brain application is just the cherry on top. If you know where the parietal lobe is approximately and get the laser up there . That’s all you need to know, so you don’t have to worry about getting two technical knowledge. You know you’ve got that ridiculous little system and vestibules final output that’s causing that. Don’t worry about any of that. That’s why I teach the okay, get a couple minutes here, a couple minutes here, a couple minutes to the local tissue, a couple…. that’s all they got to know, you know. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: How important is that there’s laser therapy in your arsenal of tools that you use for patients?

Dr. Trevor Barry: As far as mono therapies, that’s not my own brain thinking through a case is basically the number one tool in my office. I have nine lasers going in my office and they’re going constantly. There’s myself and a doctor team here at the office and we all have three FXs. We have that because we just got the new base station. We have the PL we have those they call. Our lasers are used by most of us, utilize modality in our office hands down. Not just in pain management, but in the neural realm as well. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s crazy. I was gonna say the thing that has gotten me so excited about this. I’ve been talking with the doc that I work with. Dr. Buddy Allen, and I was saying, you know for me, it’s almost as though because of the fact that there’s only upside to this, there’s literally no risk when you’re doing this. It opens the door to tremendous amounts of creativity and experimentation with each patient. In terms of figuring out what might work for them and that’s extremely liberating to us to know that like hey this is for this particular patient in this unique situation. We can experiment and really see what’s gonna work best for that patient, we can go off of best practices that we hear from docs like you, who’ve had a lot of experience, but then also incorporate just maybe perhaps even intuitive style thinking in terms of, maybe this will help and maybe it won’t do much but it certainly isn’t gonna make anything, you know, it’s not gonna create any negative side effects or create any problems there which is again very liberating for us in terms of thinking with patients. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: True statement. If you’re using a laser, it’s almost like, I’m not gonna say like, it’s almost insatiable. It’s almost too good to be true. Yes, higher powered stuff you have to be very careful of contraindications and exceeding those and things like that, but they’re cognizant, Erchnoia, that’s why patients can use it and stuff. You can send it home with them and/or they but their own and I love what you said about how the art of what we do is just this, just like a Jedi lightsaber for any kind of healthcare provider. If you’re an immunologist you’re famous and pathogen based on things like that. If you’re applying pathology use red laser and nerve roots testing you can use violets since they actually expose weaknesses and muscle testing. If you’re doing whatever technique you’re using, you can use lasers as an adjunct to just work with the art let alone the neurology and physiology and I also like the idea of introducing lasers. One of the things I’ll say is, you’re treating low back pain well, what I’ll tell doctors as the patients. The patient bends for, say they’re stuck at 30 degrees flexion instead of doing anything else. One of the things I’ll do is say, get your laser on their back and expose them for a couple minutes. Almost like a diagnostic treatment and say okay, the patient now tries forward bening. Yeah, I haven’t touched them. You haven’t done any chiropractic magic, no manipulating like that you just do the laser and then retest then and then the patient does down to 90 degrees and they;re like what did you just do back there? That’s crazy just showing that light on me and now I can turn my head all the way to the writer now I can bend for now. I can raise my shoulder again that kind of stuff or with the neurology say to have a positive cerebellar like a dismantria you laser the cerebellum and also boom. They’re right fingers, the nose or something, patients are like what is that magic? I say it’s my Jedi lightsaber. You know it’s like I’ve just worked my laser magic but it is and I’m not. It’s not just like a smoking mirror thing. It goes to show a proof of concept and now the patient’s like I want that every treatment for treatment kind of thing because whatever you just did. I’m already noticing the difference so it’s a great point about the art of what we do and just implementing it in any style of practice. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: That’s amazing. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: If Erchnoia doesn’t model their next handheld unit directly off of the lightsaber I’m gonna be very disappointed. How cool would that be?

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, I love that analogy of the Jedi lightsaber because that’s what it sounds like. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: Yeah, pretty much. 

Dr. Andrew Wells: The doctor signature model is what that will be but I love it. [INAUDIBLE] Steve Shanks and Kevin on, we’ll hit him up. Next time I talk to Steve and Travis, I’ll ask them for that. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: I think that’s gonna be expensive for royalty being paid over to Disney for that one though. I think that’s the only problem. So, for those who are listening here and not seeing, we’re on the screen with Dr. Barry when he first walked in on the podcast he was sitting in a chair behind him with a t-shirt that said “I’m billing you for this” What does it say there? I’m charging you for this or I’ve been invoicing you? I really do for this conversation so I’m gonna take that very literally here because of my intro here in terms of my mom coming to visit in a few weeks. My mom’s gonna be here for four or five days. Tell me what you would do if you were in my situation in my shoes here because I’m gonna be sending this podcast literally as soon as we’re done over to my parents because I’ve been talking with them back and forth. What would you do? What would the frequency look like, just give us a quick rundown.

Dr. Trevor Barry: Yeah, so, I’m using my base pain setting you know like the 16 16 42 53 setting. I’ve been using it the first two days. What I would try to do is just set and forget it so that I would actually have her if she had access to do it twice a day. So, I do one morning, one afternoon for the first day and then do the same thing and see how she’s responding to that. Then, if we need to keep going further, if we want to get more extreme then you’re gonna start to swim upstream. So, then you’re gonna base your laser, maybe not just on her right or whatever the pain, but now we’re gonna go you know lumbar spine as you know right around L1 area right there. So, I go right on the lumbar spine and then angle the laser. If you’re using say the effects or we’re putting one beam on the lumbar spine, one a little bit more nerve distribution and then one beam right on that glues SI area. Just hypothetically, and then I’m gonna do that for a couple minutes. Then, I’m gonna do the Vagus nerve and then I’m doing applications of the parietal frontal. So, depending on which laser you have on tip. If I’m just using the handheld like this, I’ll do two minutes on each section, so I do two minutes of vagus two, two minutes parietal, two minutes free frontal. I’ll typically do, when we did the low back study just for those listening, we did 20 minutes with the FX 365, that’s as long as I’ve ever done with my Erchnoia devices. I’ll never go any further. Yeah people treat longer than that because of your safety in that format but very rarely. Do I find you ever have to go longer than that, so typically I may do the tissue exposure for 10. I do the nerve root spinal cord for two Vagus for two parietal for two three frontal for two…. and away she goes. So, do the first two days just the local tissue a couple times a day and then for the last couple days and you know I’m of the belief that everybody should be getting brain-based lasers for neuroprotective mechanisms prevention of dementia. I think sure, things like that we’re about to get into the next podcast so it’s why not expose them to that. Anyway you know, go right into the history of approach, just further neurological protective purposes let alone the pain medicine.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, that’s awesome. And would you incorporate any of the vibration type stuff in conjunction with what you were talking about earlier?

Dr. Trevor Barry: I love the idea of stacking, booking modality to get that laser energy. That’s the most important thing, passive range of motion act, the range of motion electrical stem like ten units topicals vibration, any whatever modality you like to use in your office or whatever treatment you’re doing. If you can do that treatment while your lasering the body and brain and stuff you have a home run.

Dr. Andrew Wells: Awesome, and you include PEMF and that as well?

Dr. Trevor Barry: Yeah, that’s another one you know. I’ve only used rings and stuff, but I know like some of the better ones that are and I’m not knocking on me. I’m not here to you know be but you know those are less expensive. You get like beamers and bats and things like that. Yeah you can stack that with that or TMS to me even those kinds of things will ways or with QEG stuff like neural feedback. You see some really cool findings, watch when you laser the brain and you see the brain frequencies change with neural feedback in real time. We’ll talk about that next section though.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah yeah that’s amazing. So, any other questions Dr. Wells you got?

Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, I think I have tons of questions but we’re coming up on like an hour and this has been an amazing episode and so Dr. Barry, we would love to have you on again at some point. We’re gonna have you on in a couple episodes for brain health, but really want to thank you for sharing your knowledge and yeah man. I’m so excited to hear what you’re doing not only for back pain but for central nervous system therapies like that’s incredible so as I’m listening to you, I’m getting a lot of hope for a lot of people and a lot of doctors and so yeah, thank you for sharing your wisdom with this and no doubt docs listening to this are gonna be encouraged that they have a really powerful tool they can use to help a wide rank of patients with a wide range of conditions. So, thank you so much. 

Dr. Trevor Barry: Oh, you guys are doing a great job getting that message out there, the more people that you know this planet needs this help more than ever and so thank you guys both for sharing such a great platform this is. It’s really an honor to be here. 

Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, you bet. I was gonna say in closing, you know the one thing that really shines through is your passion. You can tell that this is a topic that you really genuinely are passionate about and so it makes it so easy and enjoyable. I’m really looking forward to docs getting a chance to listen to this episode because I think one of two things is going to happen; they’re gonna have jaws dropped or they’re gonna be copiously like scribbling binders, full of notes here in terms of what they’re hearing and learning which is again why I think this is gonna be great. You’ll be a great sub and guest hopefully multiple times over this podcast. Hopefully this is the first of many many wonderful interviews that we get the privilege and honor of having you on so thank you again for your time. We appreciate you. And, for the docs listening, we hope that this has been immensely valuable for you. If you’re thinking of patients that can benefit from this, reach out to Dr. Berry and Erchnoia if you want more information there, I know I’m probably gonna be one of your first people signing up for whatever your class is. I’m definitely dying to get that so for docs who are already there like ok Dr. Barry’s awesome, I want to go to one of his classes. Where would you recommend they go? How can they connect with you?

Dr. Trevor Barry: Yeah, the best way is through the Erchonia website if they go to it tells you how old I am. They have their events and you can drop down. They have all their events for the year listed or you can even click on my name and they’ll show you all my events. There’s even state stuff that’s not there like I’m doing Oklahoma. I’m doing Parker and Orlando this year. I’m doing a bunch of stuff there as well but if you got that the easiest way is to go to that website and then my clinic is AZCaironeuro.com. It’s AZCiaroneuro.com.

Dr. Chad Woolner: Awesome, awesome! That’s very cool. I’m sure a log of docs are gonna be jumping on so that’s gonna be exciting. So docs, thanks for listening and sticking around because we’re gonna have another really awesome interview with Dr. Barry coming up here real soon, so you guys do not want to miss that. Hope you guys enjoyed it and we’ll talk to you guys on the next episode. 

[OUTRO]

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 Erchnoia 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.