The Brain Scan That Explains Everything About You | With Braincode Centers

- You actually reversed your bipolar completely naturally. - You can teach the brain how to correct that activity then you have the opportunity to reallocate where that energy is put in the brain. - I honestly can tell you, I don't even remember what anxiety feels like truly. That I haven't had a panic attack since I did neurofeedback 10 years ago. - Why is brain mapping or neurofeedback ideal for somebody trying to get off a medication? - You're essentially teaching the brain to do what the medication is doing synthetically, organically from a learning perspective. (upbeat music) - Millions of people have spent years believing that they are anxious, depressed, burned out, have ADHD, are bipolar. They're just emotional, maybe lazy, unfocused or even broken. Meanwhile, the real story may be sitting right between our ears. The brain is the most powerful organ in the human body and yet most of us have never actually looked into it. Today we're talking about brain mapping, neurofeedback and what happens when you stop treating symptoms and start looking at the source. Joining me is Rachel Lambert, founder of Brain Code Centers, licensed psychotherapist and board certified neurofeedback practitioner. After neurofeedback transformed her own mental health as a teenager, she dedicated her career to helping others better understand and optimize their brains. And then there's Angie Noak, senior vice president of Brain Code Centers, licensed professional counselor, neuroscience educator and brain optimization expert, following a life altering traumatic brain injury. Angie turned her recovery journey into a mission to help others unlock the brain's ability to heal and perform at its best. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube or Culture Pathocryon Spotify. Please first, leave a five star review for the show. This helps us climb the charts and become discoverable to new listeners as well as continue getting the best guests. Please welcome Rachel and Angie from Brain Code Centers to Culture Pathocryon. Everybody just says, this is how I am. Take it or leave it. This is how my brain operates. There's nothing I can do. I'm just stuck with it. I have a messed up broken brain. Is that really true? Everybody has different patterns, right? From an electoral standpoint. This is why there's CEOs of companies. This is why there's people that are engineers and this is why there's creatives. So it's not that our brains are messed up, but oftentimes our brains lack the ability to state shift exceptionally well and so our brain will get stuck in different physiological states, right? And this is then when people have blind spots where they can't focus or they're feeling anxious or they can't fall asleep at night. So we are under the belief that your brain is never broken. Your brain is always neuroplastic. It's always willing to change and it's capable of change. But you just have to give it that catalyst in which to do so. - If I showed you a brain scan, could you tell me if somebody was depressed or anxious or addicted or headed for burnout? - Absolutely, we can. Yes, so really nothing can hide from us in a brain scan. We're looking at all of the different brain waves that people are creating and what's overactive and underactive and that tells us things, right? It's really like a tapestry of your life. You probably already know a few experience feelings of anxiety or experience feelings of depression. But it's more so as a culture we're very hooked on diagnosis, right, that we are everybody's diagnosed with everything and going to make sure that they're diagnosed with something. But really when it comes down to a diagnosis, all that is is symptoms, right? That's not actually looking at the underlying biology of what's happening. That's what we're doing. We're looking at the underlying biological force of what is pushing these symptoms out and that's how we're able to determine that. - How many people are walking around convinced that they're lazy, they're crazy, they've got ADHD, they're anxious depressed. When the real issue is that their brain just isn't functioning properly. - How many people do you know, friends, family members that are just self-diagnosed ADHD? When the fact truly is zero percent of people, zero percent of people that actually have either self-proclaimed ADHD or they have a diagnosis of ADHD, have actually looked at the very organ that creates symptomology in the first place, right? We are not as a society measuring the brain before creating a diagnosis or a plan. All we do is look at symptomology. And so what we believe is if you're curious about ADHD or insomnia or sleep issues, why are you not looking at the brain for answers? So utilizing QAG brain mapping, you can actually look at clinical patterns. So you can really understand whether the brain is or isn't falling into certain distribution of brainwave activity that's gonna create those patterns for people. We look at brainwave activity. It's not about the brain functioning properly, right? It's about optimal activity and the ability to have good neuroplasticity. Because ADHD from just a brainwave pattern isn't necessarily a negative thing. Even a pattern of anxiety, right? If it's well-managed, there can be so much benefit to that. So it's never about taking away someone's God-given strength. So it's really just optimizing the brain's activity so that it can move in and out of these different states really well. - Okay, let's start at the beginning here. What exactly is a brain map? - A brain map is a QEG. It's a quantitative electroencephalogram map. So it's similar to an EEG, right? Except we're looking at the quantitative analysis of that. So an EEG is if someone has, let's say epilepsy, right? They're gonna go in, we're gonna look at brainwaves. We have the ability to quantify that with that we're looking at brainwaves. All humans have the capability of producing the same brainwaves. Delta deep sleep, theta drifting into sleep. Alpha is kind of a receptor that helps move the brain around and give it flexibility. Beta should be clean focused energy. High beta is fight or flight. And we need all of them. However, when we have certain things, let's say happen to us, right? Maybe we experience trauma or prolonged stress. Okay, now our brain sits in a place of hypervigilance and fight or flight. Or maybe just biologically we move a little bit slower and we produce excess theta wave activity in the brain, which might look more like an ADHD pattern. Neither is bad or good, right? All brains are good. It's a matter of understanding what drives our brain, right? Kind of which brainwaves are speaking the loudest. So we start with that brain map. We do a full review with people to go over with them. And we can do this from anywhere, Alex. So we literally work with people across the world to do brain mapping and neurofeedback. So we ship them equipment, help them do the brain map. Via Zoom, put a cap on their head, go over all the data with them so that they can understand exactly where are these symptoms coming from and why are they happening? Yeah, I think when people hear a brain map, then maybe they're thinking of like being inside an MRI machine. But that's not what's happening. Like what are you guys actually measuring? Yeah, so we're measuring brain wave activity electrically. So if you think about Dr. Aiman, right? The Aiman Clinic in California. That is a blood flow scan, but also a brain map. R's is an electrical neurological scan. So we're looking at all of the electrical wave activity happening in the brain. Is there a difference between what he's able to test with what he does and what you guys are able to test? There's a lot of overlap of hyper or hypoprefusion and excess brain wave activity, right? So whether we're looking at inflammation of the brain or is there an excess amount of brain wave and brain waves in your frontal lobe, that's usually going to be correlated with also an overproduction of blood flow. So there's a lot of continuity between the two scans, but they are fundamentally a different type of scan and report. However, they are looking at very similar patterns, like DSM diagnoses, ADHD, anxiety, depression. So with a spectra image, you can actually get a formal diagnosis with QAG brain mapping. We're looking a lot more at patterns so that people can understand. So it's not just telling you, hey, you have patterns of depression, anxiety, or ADHD, or bipolar or whatever. It's also then you're able to actually reverse those patterns and kind of help reverse some of these things that people struggle with. That's what we love about what we do is neurofeedback, which is the therapy that brain code center specializes in, is the modality of therapy that we utilize to help optimize these patterns that are unfavorable. So unlike an MRI or a CAT scan or even a spectra image, it gives you great information, but a lot of times clients leave those and they're like, well, what now? What should I do now? I'm already taking the supplements. I'm already doing the behavioral things that I'm supposed to be doing. I've already made lifestyle modifications, but they're still feeling stuck. And that's what we love about neurofeedback is you give information, you empower clients with what's going on, but then there's a perfect solution of here's what's next and here's what we can actually do to change fundamentally how your brain is operating. 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Visit toothpillow.com and get your child assessed free using code Alex Clark. That's toothpillow.com and get your child assessed free using code Alex Clark. What does the appointment actually look like with you guys? - So we actually ship people equipment to sets of equipment, the brain mapping equipment and then the actual headset that they're gonna keep and do their neurofeedback with. But the brain map, it's a full cap that we help them put on their head. It has little electrodes in it. Those electrodes are monitoring and reading the brainwave activity. Brainwaves look like a bunch of little swiggly lines, heartbeats basically, but they're little brainwaves. And basically we take a bunch of information, eyes open, eyes closed so that we can see the states that the brain is shifting in and out of, but we're not gonna ask you to do something, right? We always get that question. I'm like, are you gonna have me do tasks or are you gonna ask me questions? This isn't a stress test, right? I'm not like trying to put you into a place of anxiety and then measure what your brain is doing. I wanna see what your brain is doing, almost at a resting state, right? When you see people's thoughts or their memories or what is it? - It would astound you what people think that we can see. You would think that I can see like your deepest darkest secrets. Just like digging in your memory, right? What is that movie, the like, "Birds flew over the Cougu's Nest" or whatever? You would think that we can see some wax stuff, absolutely not. We're looking at brainwaves, right? But our expertise is then analyzing those brainwaves and looking at, okay, you know, the people, you know, we have, I mean, almost a hundred years of data with neurofeedback QEG brain mapping. So I'm looking at years and years and years of patterning and data to go back and say, all of the people are 90% of the people with this patterning showed these symptoms. Is that something, you know, Alex, that you experience? And I mean, 90% of the time people are, yeah, are like, yeah, that is. And some people are like, oh, not necessarily. This is kind of an art and a science, right? It's really us, you know, digging and asking questions and looking at patterns to analyze exactly why is this person suffering in the way that they're suffering? So what sorts of personality things or behavior things do you guys see when you're doing these scans on somebody? - I mean, if we're looking at the main symptomology that people are going to experience, just the regular top 10 symptoms, right? Anxiety, like I said, depression, ADHD, insomnia, you name it. So we can filter people into, okay, these are the top 10 symptoms you're going to experience basis this brain map. But it's a lot more than that, right? Like, let's talk about anxiety, for example. People can have 50 different experiences of anxiety, right? Some people have heart palpitations. Some people have more racing thoughts. Some people experience it very somatically. Other people not so much at all. And so basis where the brain waves are, right? If they're too high or too low in a different location of the brain, if the timing and communication of the brain isn't dialed in, then those patterns are going to be expressed in a different way. And so that's what's really cool about brain mapping is we're not just looking at the symptom, but we're looking at the intricacies of how the brain is or isn't moving optimally for that person to get very, very, very dialed in about what's going on with them. Same thing too when we're talking about attachments, right? There's patterns for us to see, does somebody have a little bit more of an avoidant or an anxious or disorganized style of attachment? And if people don't know what attachment styles are, it's how do you attach well? Did we learn as a baby to develop secure attachments with other people? Often times that looks very different because of traumas or the way that we grew up or did we have a narcissistic parent or did we not have a parent at all, right? We had a lot of grief and loss and dying. All of a sudden our brain digest that information, right? And so then when we get into a relationship with a loved one, maybe we find ourselves not being super secure and having some avoidant tendencies. The question we look at is why is that happening? 'Cause there oftentimes is answers that we can look to from a neurological perspective to glean us that information. So it's just this beautiful. We say they're visual forms of grace for us to just understand how someone's wired and why they maybe have different blind spots they're not proud of, but also the beauty and the strengths that they have as an individual. Honestly, we can see all of that on a brain map, which is incredible. - What can a brain map tell you? - So a lot of times we do get questions about serotonin or dopamine or are you looking at the chemicals in the brain. No, this is an electrical neurological scan. However, all those things are correlated, right? If someone has excess high beta, which is excess fight or flight wave activity in the brain, can I deduce probably that they're gonna be in a heightened state of stress and they're gonna be producing stress hormones, cortisol, you know, things like that? Yes, I can deduce that. But is it directly showing me coming out with a report saying, hey, your serotonin is here, your dopamine is here? - No. - You are diagnosed bipolar. - If that same teenage Rachel walked into a psychiatrist's office today, would they still diagnose you? - Oh my gosh, no. No, I don't fit any of the criteria whatsoever to have the fitting of bipolar whatsoever. And I think that's the coolest thing ever is bipolar as a diagnosis is typically a life sentence of medication management or your life might be incredibly difficult. And I just look at it as I had the opportunity as a teenager for my brain to learn a better way of functioning. My brain literally got to create new neurological highways that it got to run down so that my brain could have the flexibility and ultimately, I then was back in the driver's seat. I think most people, if they have a diagnosis of bipolar, they don't feel like they're in the driver's seat. - Well, yeah, I think it's kind of positioned or messaged as a lifelong sentence. Like you are bipolar for life, that's it. Medications for life, that's all. But you actually reversed your bipolar completely naturally. - I wouldn't necessarily use the word reverse. I would say there was areas in my brain that were over and under firing. If we fundamentally, as neurospecialists believe that you can teach the brain how to correct that activity, then you have the opportunity to reallocate where that energy is put in the brain. I mean, whether it's reversed or helping the brain reallocate its energy, that really is, I think, the process that I went through. And it was incredible. I mean, truly, truly incredible. And it's really what lit a fire inside my soul to help bring this therapy to more and more people. - How did you even know to try this therapy at it as a teenager? - God bless my parents. Thank God, my parents fought for me. I was pretty stubborn by nature. So I didn't want to be reliant on medication my whole life. So I was very resistant to the idea of, having to fill up a medication bottle every single week for the rest of my life. And I had tried traditional talk therapy. And it was helpful, and we're both licensed therapists, so they're absolutely as a time and a place for traditional talk therapy. But it wasn't seeming to really get to the root of what was going on. So thankfully, my parents found out about brain mapping and neurofeedback, and it was kind of my last, last ditch effort. And I'm so thankful that we did it. - She got a lobotomy. (laughing) - Getting, there's no lobotives in this. I honestly think Alexis might upset some people, but we do not feel like diagnosis have a lot of validity. And let me explain. We were like, oh, diagnosis, right? Even right now, we're talking about anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar. So the DSM-5, Thomas Insal, who was the director of the National Institute for Mental Health, said that the DSM-5 has a lot of reliability, right? That we as counselors and we as therapists and psychiatrists all reliably agree that X, Y and Z symptoms create X diagnosis. In no way, are we looking at the underlying biological reasons of why that is happening? That is what creates validity. So Rachel was diagnosed bipolar with no brain scan, right? That somebody was looking at her going, oh my gosh, you're showing X, Y and Z symptoms, therefore you are this, right? Now when she did a brain scan, okay, yeah, some of those things, some of those things fit. But we honestly see a lot of what we would consider to be misdiagnosis, right? So people are walking in, being prescribed all of these different medications with a reliable amount of research, but not a lot of validity. - Think about the PHQ-9, which is a traditional depression scale, and you might already know about this, right? The PHQ-9 is just a slew of questions that then people are put in a box of your depression or you're not depressed, which interestingly enough, Pfizer is the huge company that funds a lot of these mental health scales. So the fact that we are relying on scales to put people on medication, I feel like we're really missing the nail for that. - These blood work companies are often lying about the price. I keep seeing people say, "Oh, it's only $30 a month." No, that is not actually what you're going to pay. Here's what happens. You sign up, great, then you need your blood drawn. Well, that's extra. You want to talk to a human about your results? That's another fee. You need supplements, separate purchase. You need real treatment like hormones or peptides. Sorry, not available. Go find another doctor and then pay again. So that cheap membership that you got, are thinking about doing for getting your biomarkers tested and all of your blood work actually turns into this expensive scavenger hunt where nothing connects. So this is why I switched to Jevety. Unlike a lot of these other testing companies like Function Health or other ones that are super popular, Jevety is not only going to give you all of the answers in your blood work, they have an entire team to go through your blood work with you and then come up with plans, right? Like, okay, based on your blood work, what supplements would we recommend? What nutrition goals should we set? What lifestyle goals should we set? Nobody else is doing that. So with Jevety, the price is the price. You get comprehensive blood work, over 90 biomarkers tested, a personalized, long Jevety blueprint that actually explains what's going on. You get provider visits included, a care team that you can message, supplements, peptides, hormone support, all managed in one place based on your labs. And they retest every six months to actually adjust your plan. That's the difference. It's not just testing. It is testing, explanation, and actual action. And if you've already wasted money somewhere else, and you're sitting on labs that you don't understand, Jevety just launched a free tier. Now, this is important. Listen to me. You can upload your results from previous blood work that you've gotten done, that you have no idea how to understand without paying anything on gogevety.com. And they will tell you what it means. Gogevity.com. This is all free. You can use code Alex. Okay, gogevity.com code Alex. I just got a message from a listener that said Alex, I thought ear purifiers were hype until I got a Jasper within one night, I was sleeping better breathing easier and wondering how I've ever lived without it. And that is the reaction that I hear over and over again. Most people do not think about air quality. And they also don't even know that they have bad air quality until you get a Jasper because it's not your typical air purifier. It is the first air scrubber specifically built for home use using commercial grade technology, powerful enough to tackle wildfire smoke, mold spores, dust, pollen, pet dander, and even the VOCs released from household products and furniture. What I love is that it doesn't just mask problems. It actually removes them. And that's especially important during seasons when windows stay closed, whether it's wildfire season, allergy season, or winter, when we're spending more time indoors. The air inside our homes can often be more polluted than we realize, which is why so many people notice improvements in their sleep, breathing an overall well-being after bringing a Jasper into every room of their home. Plus, it's backed by a lifetime warranty. So this isn't just another gadget. It's an investment in your family's long-term health. Go to Jasper.co. Use code Alex for $200 off. That's Jasper, J-A-S-P-R, dot-co with code Alex for $200 off. Angie, you had a traumatic brain injury where you had to literally relearn how to walk. And you're obviously like thriving and doing fantastic. So did this stuff also help you with a traumatic brain injury? So like Rachel, I had parents, my mom, especially who was crunchy far before it was cool to be crunchy, who yeah, when doctors were saying, Hey, this is probably as good as it's going to get 19 year old in a walker. She said, absolutely not. You know, that is, that is not going to be our future. So I did a lot of different things that were more kind of Eastern type medicine, right? Facial work. What happened? How did you even get a TBI? Yeah. So this is, it was not some like wild situation. I went and donated blood. I was home for the summer between sophomore junior year of college, passed out when I went to leave. And I, the way in which my body locked up and I fell, it was on linoleum over cement and fractured the occipital plate in my skull. And oh, rough. And all the bleeding was internal. So unfortunately, because it was an external bleeding, I didn't go to the hospital for quite some time. But couldn't walk started throwing up. It was a whole situation spent a couple of weeks in the intensive care unit. And then yeah, when I was released, I, I had serious vestibular issues. Like my brain had no idea if it was standing or not. Did you have personality changes? Yes, I did. Yeah, honestly, for a long time, I would get so overstimulated in crowds. I couldn't be in a group of 20 people. I would freak out, have to leave. I wasn't a cryer before I had a brain injury. Like I don't, I never cried. My grandparents would pass away. And I was very saddened by it. I just wasn't hyper emotional. Like commercial on TV of a cat being homeless. And I was like, Oh, God. I mean, I was around. Do you notice these changes? Yeah, I was really reactive to stuff. Fortunately, my mom did a lot of research on brain injuries and went, Okay, this looks like psychosomatic, right? This looks like a personality thing. This is because of a brain injury. Then even 10 years down the line, I was having some really severe anxiety and insomnia from the brain injury. And I was introduced to neurofeed, honestly, I feel like neurofeedback found me. I did not find it. I ended up doing some neurofeedback. And it was, I honestly can tell you, I don't even remember what anxiety feels like truly that I haven't had a panic attack since I did neurofeed back 10 years ago. Wouldn't even think it would ever happen to me. What's something that most people don't understand about traumatic brain injury? It's a very invisible injury, right? That when you break your leg, you have a cast on your leg and someone's going, Oh, look, you're obviously hurt versus a lot of things about brain injuries look like personality issues, right? So again, that's where you're probably receiving a diagnosis of, let's say, bipolar or let's say depression or let's say anxiety. I mean, we have a lot of X NFL players who are trying to commit at 37 years old and we're going, oh my gosh, what's going on? They have had multiple compounding concussions for the last 15 years. Oh, let's speculate. Do you think OJ had a traumatic brain injury before he killed his wife? We're just going to speculate. We're just going to throw stuff out there. That's a really loose loose, I think. One, he obviously had some very serious issues. It would be really interesting to look at. I mean, let's not even talk about OJ, let's talk about anyone who's outdoing really horrific crimes, right? Who let's say we can go back and look, did that person suffer a traumatic brain injury or do they have a past history of trauma? One, the answer is yes, right? Rarely are we ever going to see someone sociopathic who came from a very loving, secure attachment, all this stuff. All of these things come from somewhere, but that is a really good question there. And I'm forgetting the name of the study that was done. It was a railroad road worker who had a spike. It's a very famous study who had a spike literally go through his brain real about. Oh my god, real about me. He lived, which is incredible, but he was a completely different person after because literally of where the spike went, it shut down areas of his brain. One of them being empathy, right? So areas of our brain that are shut down that are creating empathy, now you experience no empathy, right? So I heard someone I literally experienced nothing from it. That's a really good speculation. Now, I don't know because also a lot of football players have had multiple compounding concussions and they don't kill anybody. So, you know, why, why you versus that? But maybe did OJ grow up with some trauma, then had a traumatic brain injury. Now he's doing horrible things. What do you guys think is up with those people that are like in a coma? And then they wake up and they speak Spanish or they're like fluently Chinese, Mandarin, or whatever. Have you ever seen those stories? That's wild to me. Or they have a British accent all of a sudden they're American. I actually don't know. One, because even if we did a brain scan on somebody who was in a coma, like what, what, I mean, what would we see from that? They'd be crazy. So they could now, yeah, all slow wave activity, right? So it's not like we could read something. But is that what area of their brain is that unlocking that now they're, you know, especially the accent, right? They have like a perfect Mandarin accent. Like what? Yeah, that's so funny. How much of your recovery do you attribute to neurofeedback? It came along at a different time, right? So it came, you know, 10 years down the road from my original, maybe not 10 years, actually, it was probably more like seven years down the road from my original injury. But honestly, God's timing is perfect because before that, I was fighting for my life. I, I, you know, somebody had been like, Hey, let's do some neurofeedback. I wouldn't even have known, you know, what to do with that. I was, when you're relearning how to walk and trying to be a real person and then get through college and stuff, it was, you know, I was having to worry about that. It came at such a time in my life though where I feel like anxiety was starting to take over. Rachel knew me then. I was sleeping three, four hours a night, max, every single night. And yes, I was functioning, but you can only function so long on that, right? At some point, that's going to come back and buy you. And I knew that because I'm a neuro expert, I was like, this is, this cannot be forever. So doing those sessions and learning what my brain was capable of even down the road. And this is something that people don't understand about brain injuries is that your brain is always neuroplastic. So when you are told, let's say, by modern medicine, after two years, that's as much as your brain can heal no more. Absolutely not. Your brain is always capable of change. It can always learn more. I don't care age. I don't care what has happened. Your brain is capable of that change. So even 10 years down the road, my brain was still capable of healing. How many people listening right now could potentially be dealing with the concussion they don't even know? Many, many people have had concussion history. I mean, Rachel and I ask all the time on consultations, hey, do you have a concussion history? Let's say middle-aged guy, 55, absolutely not. I'm like, oh, did you play contact sports? Well, yeah, I played football through college. I'm like, okay, no concussion, you know, but at that age, it was called getting your bell rang. We'd ever even talked about concussions, right? Or I've had, you know, we maybe see something in a brain map. I asked some questions. The client goes and asks their parent and they're like, well, yeah, oh my gosh, I actually dropped you as a kid. When you were five, you had, you know, we had to take you to the hospital, but you've healed from it. You're good. The brain does not forget. The brain will always show those patternings. And now is what you're experiencing now because of that concussion? A hundred percent? Probably not, but it's a contributing factor. What is the weirdest symptom of brain injury that people never connect to the brain? So we get a lot of like, like you were saying psychosomatic, but I do feel like people connect that to the brain. But there's so many people that maybe they're having vision issues or vestibular issues and they're just thinking I need to do like PT or vision therapy, but then they exhaust that therapy. And then we look at their brain. We're like, oh my gosh, no, you absolutely still have some neural work that needs to be done. So I'd say I feel like a lot of vision issues that if I feel like that's normal for us to understand, but a lot of people don't put that correlation together. That and honestly, social, right? That people who, if you meet somebody I love, personal socially weird like a lot of times that's a brain injury, right? That, you know, they're not even necessarily connecting. There's areas of their brain that are no longer like firing and wiring together as well. So you might be reading a facial expression and they're like, I'm throwing this out well. They're picking up what I'm putting down and you're not because their brain can't necessarily connect that now. Okay. So you guys did a brain scan on me and I kind of talked about this on my Instagram stories and people like, wait, what is this that you did? What did they find out? Explain everything. So when you looked at my brain map, what's it out first? Okay. So we went over it together. And what I like to do is break it down with the different waves. And the first thing that we talked about was your sleep, right? Now you're a very high functioning. You go 100 miles per hour. You're traveling, your schedule is kind of off sometimes. But the first thing that stood out to me was sleep. And so we talked about sleep and how you're like, oh, it's absolutely something that I need to get my brain to do better. So that was like the first thing that stood out. The second thing was you have a very fast pattern, which anybody listening to this podcast, right? Talks fast, processes fast, very, very smart girl, which we love. That is going to have a pattern that's exhibited too. So if I knew nothing about you, I would obviously see that your brain has quite a bit of fast momentum. So that's going to be everything from an executive functioning standpoint, from just being more hyper aroused, from going 100 miles per hour, from getting a lot of work done during the day, maybe having a little bit of edge of anxiety or running off of adrenaline. That was the second thing. The third thing that we looked at was that attachment center. So there's an area of your brain. It's called T6. So it's located in the right hemisphere of the brain in the temporal lobe area. And a lot of that is going to show us kind of that social emotional side of things. How well do we attach to others? And so I asked you about that. And you can even expand a little bit more on that. But we kind of denoted that it was probably from some past relationship stuff, maybe some grief, lost dying of certain loved ones in your life, and how that can create a little bit of disconnect on how we attach. Like, is this safe? Is it not safe? Can I trust it? Is this person that I love going to die? There's a lot there that the brain can have to process through it. Literally within like not even a year, less than a year. My dad died, got into this toxic relationship of my entire life, like put on silent treatment for like multiple weeks at a time, like horrible, horrible painful stuff. And then my boss, Charlie Kirk, was murdered. So that all happened like very close to one another. And so it was interesting because then right after that, you know, we do this brain map and like that stuff is lighting up. So based on my brain patterns, what attachment do I have? Attachment style. You'll feel a little bit. I think we were seeing kind of a little disorganized, maybe a little bit anxious about it, right? Oh, okay. You know, is this person going to leave? Can I trust the situation? Right? So when you've had a bad breakup, when people unexpectedly that you love die, that's going to create a response, right? We all have defense mechanisms. It's not necessarily like we're all going to respond securely in every situation. It's where do you tend to to move into, right? Some people when, when horrible things happen, they dissociate, they shut down. They turn away. Other people might get a little bit hijacked. It's like, oh, well, I don't want to lose someone again, right? So that's more of that anxious style attachment. So your brain had more high beta in that area, which is going to show more of a pattern of that anxious style attachment. Was there any other interesting things for my map? I believe you have, I'm thinking back that you have some beta on the Singulate. The Singulate is the top kind of ridge of our brain. We almost call that like the CEO pattern, right? That that is fast wave activity, kind of right where you want it. It feels really good. It feels super motivating. You're somebody who gets a lot of stuff done. Now, if we have beta spindling during our sleep pattern, our sleep pattern should look very smooth, very slow. And if we have these kind of little blips happen within that, then it wakes us up at night, but it can feel very motivating during the day. So that's another thing that we saw. I went to Disneyland recently. The first thing I noticed was the amount of iPad kids, like full blown toddlers and strollers watching YouTube while sitting inside Disneyland. I'm thinking we flew here, waited in line and you're watching an unboxing video. But the other thing I noticed is that Disneyland is basically a giant petri dish. You're touching railings, ride handles, lap bars, churro counters. The same service is that tens of thousands of people touched five minutes before you. So I came prepared. I had my beekeepers natural's propolis throat spray in my bag. And I was spraying it throughout the day. If you've never heard of propolis, it's what bees use to protect their hive from germs. For us, it helps support the immune system with 300 plus beneficial count pounds, including antioxidants and bioactive nutrients. So I keep the propolis throat spray with me when I travel, but I also use their propolis nasal spray at night as part of my bedtime routine, which helps cleanse and soothe nasal passages when you've been breathing in. Well, Disneyland farts, coughs and burps. We all need to keep good immune system hygiene. What I love about beekeepers natural's is they're reinventing the medicine cabinet with clean, effective products, no dyes, chemicals or junk. A throat spray from beekeepers natural sells every 12 seconds. It's one of the most popular and effective wellness products of all time. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com, use code Alex Clark and you'll get 20% off your order. You cannot get that in stores. But if you want to get an in store, you can anywhere, basically target Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon, CVS and Walgreens. But again, my discount, which is Alex Clark is only available on their website, beekeepersnaturals.com and you'll get 20% off. I used to babysit for this family whose kids were absolute terrorists. I mean, these children were not being raised. They were conducting psychological warfare. And one of them bit me. Not when he was a toddler, he was like nine. Another one looked me dead in the eyes and said, you're not the boss because my dad owns a boat. I still don't know what that meant, but it felt threatening one night. I finally got them to bed, sat down on the couch and then I made the mistake of eating one of those healthy, I'm saying that quotes tortilla chips. Well, halfway through an episode of Rock of Love on VH1, which was so much better than Love Island ever would be, I felt like I'd swallowed a home depot receipt, okay? I turned the bag over. Of course, there's seed oils, preservatives, natural flavors. The ingredients look like they were approved by the CIA. I mean, I didn't know anything about health then, but I knew that that wasn't good and they tasted awful. That's why as an adult, I only keep massachyps in my house now. Three ingredients, organic, next to my eyes corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. That's it. No seed oils, no mystery chemicals, just real food like your great-grandparents would have recognized. You will love the hatch chili flavor. They actually taste incredible and unlike every other healthy chip out there, you don't feel bloated or gross afterwards. You actually will feel satisfied and satiated. You won't be looking for another snack ready to give Mossa a try. Go to Mossachyps.com, use code real Alex Clark for 25% off your first order. One thing to know because Mossa uses real ingredients and makes everything in small batches, certain flavors go out of stock regularly. So I got my hands on the hatch chili again after it was sold out for weeks. Don't wait if you're curious about trying that's Mossachyps.com. Use code real Alex Clark for 25% off or click the link below or scan the QR code. So now after learning that stuff about myself by doing the brain map, if I do absolutely nothing, what does my brain look like in 10 years? While we're not going to know what you're going to go through in the next 10 years, whether trauma or you decide to get on some sort of medication or you have mold toxicity in your home and it was, you didn't know about it, right? So there's now some neuroinflammation. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen in our environment that, will impact brain patterns. But let's say in 10 years, life's gone pretty similar, not a lot of changes have happened. We can map you again and we're going to look and be like, that's Alex Clark's map. So I've mapped my brain about every one to two years over the past 10 years. Pretty much you can see like that's Rachel's map, that's Rachel's map. So really it's more like a fingerprint, but looking at it from a neurological lens. Now if somebody changes something fundamentally, right? Neural feedback is an incredible, incredible tool to actually help change brain patterns. So if we see an overproduction of high beta, which is keeping people up at night, we can teach the brain how to not spindle and how to not produce all that beta so that they can fundamentally have a better, better sleep hygiene. If somebody starts to take peptides or major supplement changes or they're certain to optimize blood work, can we see some quantitative changes? Absolutely, but for the most part, fundamentally by age 20 to 25, our brain electricity is going to be pretty dialed in. Why is brain mapping or neurofeedback ideal for somebody trying to get off a medication? First off, think about what nobody asks what medication does to the brain, right? Like typically we're not like, what is this little white pill going to do to my brain for the rest of my life? But you would think we are, we are lobotomizing people with neurofeedback. What is that going to do? How does this work? How are you putting brainwaves in, in, but we don't ask that when we're taking medication for a whole life with all of these wicked side effects. So to be able to get off medication, what's awesome is we know when we're taking medication, it's going to change the electricity in our brain, but then our brain metabolizes from that medication and then we go back to baseline. So if you can actually teach the brain, let's say, for example, you're on Adderall. Adderall suppresses theta, which is a slow brainwave and increases a little bit of beta, which allows people to get outside of themselves to feel focused. But if we can do that naturally, right, we're inhibiting a theta production for somebody and helping their brain to produce beta, naturally, all of a sudden our clients are saying, oh my gosh, I've tried to get off this medication that I've felt dependent on for the last decade. And oh my gosh, do I not have to take it? Or wow, I'm not feeling the, the withdrawal symptoms as much as the last three times that I've tried to get on this medication or off this medication. So that's what's so cool is you're essentially teaching the brain to do what the medication is doing synthetically, organically from a learning. perspective. Can neurofeedback help make somebody more successful? So let's first talk what is neurofeedback? So neurofeedback is operant conditioning, which is reward-based therapy. So all we are doing is teaching the brain how to regulate its own activity and suppress unfavorable brainwave production. So the way that we do that right is we're utilizing auditory and visual feedback to teach the brain a better way of operating. If I were to ask you, Hey, Alex, you know, if you really put in the work, do you think you could learn Spanish? Yeah. Hey, Alex, if you put in the work, do you think that you could learn how to play pickleball? Yeah. Now you might get a tutor, you might get a coach, but you fundamentally would never question if your brain and your body has the ability to learn something. That is literally what neurofeedback is. Is all you are doing is teaching the brain utilizing reward, how to learn a better way of functioning. So when our clients do these sessions, right, they put the headband on. There's little sensors where we can actually read and monitor EEG activity. And then the reward comes on the app. So they download our brain code app and then let's say someone wants to watch your podcast. You can literally plug your podcast as a reward mechanism on the app. However, it's like their brain has the remote control to the experience. So when the brain is performing how we want it to your voice and your app would start to play on the screen. And then when the brain gets distracted or anxious or out of focus, the video and the sound would go away. Well, nobody's going to want to be sitting there watching the screen, you know, be blank for them. And so their brain makes auto corrections, just like you would if you were playing pickleball and your ball goes far right, like you would hopefully try to make a correction over the course of time to not get that same negative output. That's the same thing with neurofeedback. So we are just teaching the brain via that reward, how to correct its own activity. So yes, back to the original question, like neurofeedback can fundamentally change the way the brain is operating so that then those symptoms are not present. So if somebody is experiencing, you know, ADHD or inside your sleep issues, they've gotten their blood work done. They've gone to see a talk therapy therapist. Nothing seems to be working. They're not getting better. Could this brain mapping be ideal for them to figure out what's going on? Oh my gosh, absolutely. So we work with honestly, not too many people, the first thing out of the gate when they're experiencing negative symptoms go, maybe I should try this brain mapping and neurofeedback thing often we work with people. Honestly, on the back end, I've been on a medication roller coaster for years. I'm taking this meant for the side effect of this matter. Hey, I've been in talk therapy for years. But man, I'm really still experiencing X, Y and Z symptoms. How do I then change that? That really is where neurofeedback can come in, right? Because ultimately, we're not just dealing it with it on that symptom level. Think about your brain like a computer. Okay. And if you have a computer that's having issues, probably the first thing that we do is go look and see, do we need a software update? Okay. Yeah. Well, it's software update and that can that can maybe take care of some of what we're dealing with at the end of the day, though, if we have a hardware issue, a software update really can never touch that. We have to at some point address the hardware. There's an amazing book called The Body Keeps the Score by Best of End or Culk that talks about how our bodies and our brains hold on to things like trauma on that cellular level. That is neurofeedback, getting into the biology and understanding it and addressing it there. And can can neurofeedback make you more successful? That's such a funny and interesting question. So twofold. Number one, we work with a lot of professional athletes. We work with a lot of high performers. And so it's interesting, right? Because people are already operating at such a high capacity. So the question is like, are we getting the one, two, three percent better? Yes. I mean, if your brain is that much faster, that much better from a communication standpoint. If the timing is that much more dialed in, success should be an outcome from that, right? On the other side of that, how many people that are super successful deal with a lot of high stress, like, yes, they're tolerance is high. Yes, they're capacity is high. Maybe they're not sleeping. Maybe they crash and burn. Maybe they're sprinters. They run circles around people, but man, they get payback for weeks. If you can teach the brain how to have that amazing sustained energy, but filtered in through this really crisp, clean level. Of course, we believe people can be more successful. Also, I mean, working with some of the top professional athletes in the world that are doing incredible things. And they start neurofeedback and all of a sudden like, Rachel Angie, like I had my, I dropped my handicap, you know, two strokes or oh my gosh. Like I had the best game I've ever had in the history. Or oh my gosh, I was able to stay in flow state way more than I've ever experienced in a game. So absolutely we were biased. But I think neurofeedback can for sure make you more successful. What do you say to people who say this brain map, neurofeedback stuff, sounds a little woo-woo, snake oil, snet woo-woo. I mean, we hear that kind of stuff all the time. First off, I don't think it's my job to convince you that neurofeedback is, is the best thing ever, right? That we do before and after brain maps on clients day in and day out. That is the testimony. I'm like, if you go on and you look at it before and after brain map, it would be if somebody said, hey, exercise is so woo-woo, exercise is stupid. It doesn't work. And then you look at before and after pictures of people who have built muscle and gain and leaned out and all these different things. You're going, oh my, that's pretty hard to dispute, right? Like, hey, proof is in the pudding. We're looking at before and after brain maps, as well as having testimonies of people saying, I used to really struggle with focus and motivation. And now I have sustained energy. I'm sleeping better. I haven't had a panic attack in years. I've never had to be on medication for bipolar disorder, right? That I don't have to convince you that that's a thing. If neurofeedback is not for you, it's not for you. However, I do believe that the world is looking for more natural forms of medicine. And for, and for more natural options for things like mental health. And neurofeedback is one of those options. If somebody listening has spent years believing I'm anxious, I'm depressed, I'm burned out, I'm broken, I have bipolar, I have ADHD. Or they just think like, I don't know, I'm just not enough. Like, I just, like, I'm not as smart as other people. Give the elevator pitch on what this could do for them. Ultimately, your brain is never too far gone. It doesn't matter the trauma that you've been through, the story that you unfavorably were served. It doesn't matter if you've had a brain injury or you've been dependent on medication for so long and you feel fearful that without it, you're, you're going to be a mess. Like, our brains and bodies are designed to learn and they can become stronger and more flexible and have better endurance. And if we ever question that, right, then you're fundamentally questioning like how you were designed. We never, ever, ever question if a baby can learn how to walk. Yet we question every single day if we can combat anxiety or get rid of depression. You never question if a baby can learn how to talk usually unless there's some sort of underlying diagnoses. Talking and communication is such an incredible, complex task for anybody to learn. But we never question that yet. We question if our brain is capable of getting through really hard mental health struggles. So we always say like, your brain is so capable of change. It is worth the change if it's creating stressful, you know, things for you. But yeah, you ultimately just have to give your brain the opportunity to learn. What is something like this cost? So with our remote program, so I know I said earlier, people can do neurofeedback from anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. We work with people everywhere doing remote neurofeedback. I would say the span is going to be between and we do 100% free consultations for everyone. We want to meet with you, talk with you, understand kind of what your goals are. And if this is a right fit for you, it's going to be anywhere between probably, you know, 1800 to 3500, depending on, you know, kind of how much maybe accountability you need, right? So the actual neurofeedback does not change. It's always going to be the neurofeedback that you need. It's going to be completely tailored to you. But some people feel like, hey, I have a Peloton at home and I hang my clothes on it. I've never sat on that. Other people are like, I have a home gym. I work out every single day by myself. Do you have a lot of personal accountability? Or do you need us to come alongside you and really, hey, did you do your session today? We need to get on it. That kind of depends on, that can vary cost a little bit, but that's going to be kind of the range. How do people set up and get an appointment to do this? We love education. So first off, let's get all the myths, the questions debunked, the snake oil, if you have questions around that. But we love doing that initial consultation. We get to meet you, we get to answer all your questions, allow you to feel really confident in this because most people, they don't know about neurofeedback. They don't know about brain mapping. So let's really bring this process to life for you. Yeah, ultimately, after we do the free consultation, then we can set people up and get them set up on their journey. Where do they find you online? Yeah, they can go to @BrainCodeCenters, our Instagram, Rachel actually runs our Instagram She's fantastic. So if somebody's DMing you, it's not somebody on the back end, it's literally Rachel. So you can DM us on Instagram. We're happy to chat there and then braincodecenters.com is where you can pop on and schedule a totally free 30 minute consultation and 90% of the time it's going to be Rachel or myself. And a lot of times too, if you don't want to sign up for the whole neurofeedback program, do the brain map. Cauchy, 300 bucks, get information in front of you, allow yourself to feel more confident in the process and then you can decide if you want to commit to the therapy. I ask every guest this at the end of every episode. So each of you can do your answers, I'll start with you Angie. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally or spiritually what would it be? I would offer people discernment. So and I know that sounds, we're doing brain mapping and neurofeedback, but there's so much out there, there's so much information. We live in the day of information, right? That it is at your fingertips. But if people were able to discern what is right for them, because not everything is right for everybody. And there are things out there that have really big promises and can't necessarily deliver. So I would want people to be able to discern what do I need right now, what is going to get me to that next level of wellness? That's what I would want. You say that companionship, that whether it's with a significant other or a friend, I think more than ever, right? We have social media and we have a million dollars. But online and we need to get back to this like get back to just being with people and feeling people's presence and Being able to exchange that energy. I think energy exchange with really amazing humans is such an undervalued gift And I think having Incredible companionship does so much harmony for for our systems Rachel and Angie Thank you for coming on culture pop the carry. Thank you. Thank you Alex This conversation taught us anything. It's that the brain is far more adaptable than most of us have been led to believe New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific 9 p.m. Eastern wherever you listen to your podcasts or watch on YouTube Please leave us a five star review on Apple or Spotify It's been a while or you just never have let us know which episode really brought you here and converted you into a regular listener It's it it takes like two seconds to do and it really helps us out This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken its medical advice Always consult with a qualified health care professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care I'm Alex Clark and this is culture pop the carry