In Episode #135, Dr. Jill Carnahan and Dr. Patrick Porter, PHD discuss the benefits of brain training with brain tap. Brain training has been shown to improve cognitive function, working memory, and more. Brain tap is a new technology that helps to improve brain function by stimulating specific areas of the brain.
Key Points
- Thrive in Overdrive: Tips to overcome toxic stress and improving neuroplasticity
- Thoughts, traumas and toxins are the biggest threat to optimal brain function
- How BrainTap can lead to better performance, improved sleep, better health, decrease stress or worry, and weight loss
- How increasing alpha wave state increases acetylcholine production and increasing theta wave state increases gaba production a precursor to DMT.
The Guest – Dr. Patrick Porter
Patrick K. Porter, PhD is an award-winning author, educator, consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker. With 20 years of experience operating the largest self-help franchise in the world, he has become a highly sought-after expert within the personal improvement industry, having sold over 3 million of his self-help products worldwide. Dr. Porter has been on the cutting edge of brainwave entrainment technology for 32 years. His newest brain-training platform, BrainTap is distinctively designed to activate the brain’s neuroplasticity. The BrainTap headset uses light & sound technology in combination with Dr. Porter’s proprietary guided visualization audio-sessions to help people achieve brain fitness, overcome stress, lose weight, stop smoking, manage pain, accelerate learning, enjoy superb sleep and make any number of lifestyle improvements. He is the author of the award-winning bestseller, Awaken the Genius, Mind Technology for the 21st Century, Discover the Language of the Mind, Thrive in Overdrive, How to Navigate Your Overloaded Lifestyle, among others.
Website: https://drpatrickporter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpatrickporter/
Related Links
- https://braintap.com
- https://braintap.info
- https://www.jillcarnahan.com/2022/06/20/can-neurofeedback-help-treat-adhd-exploring-the-underlying-brain-waves-in-adhd/
- https://www.jillcarnahan.com/2018/11/27/can-you-really-make-yourself-smarter-biohacking-your-brain/
Dr. Jill
Dr. Jill Carnahan is Your Functional Medicine Expert® dually board certified in Family Medicine for ten years and in Integrative Holistic Medicine since 2015. She is the Medical Director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, a widely sought-after practice with a broad range of clinical services including functional medical protocols, nutritional consultations, chiropractic therapy, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, and massage therapy. As a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and toxic mold illness she brings a unique perspective to treating patients in the midst of complex and chronic illness. Her clinic specializes in searching for the underlying triggers that contribute to illness through cutting-edge lab testing and tailoring the intervention to specific needs.
A popular inspirational speaker and prolific writer, she shares her knowledge of hope, health, and healing live on stage and through newsletters, articles, books, and social media posts! People relate to Dr. Jill’s science-backed opinions delivered with authenticity, love and humor. She is known for inspiring her audience to thrive even in the midst of difficulties.
Featured in Shape Magazine, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, First for Women, Townsend Newsletter, and The Huffington Post as well as seen on NBC News and Health segments with Joan Lunden, Dr. Jill is a media must-have. Her YouTube channel and podcast features live interviews with the healthcare world’s most respected names.
The Podcast
The Video
The Transcript
#135: Dr. Jill and Dr. Patrick Porter discuss Brain Training with Brain Tap
Dr. Jill 0:12
Okay, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill Live. I'm here today with Dr. Patrick Porter. I'm super excited to introduce him to talk all about brain training and things and ways and pathways to optimize your performance and to beat anxiety, overwhelm, and anything [else] that's bothering you. I'm super excited to dive into that topic today. If you have missed any past episodes, you can catch us on YouTube on my channel, on Stitcher or iTunes, or anywhere you watch or listen to podcasts. Please do stop in and rate and review so that we can reach more listeners.
Dr. Jill 0:49
Without further ado, I want to introduce my guest today, Dr. Patrick Porter, founder, and creator of BrainTap. I know if you follow me much, you've heard me talk about BrainTap briefly. But today we're going to dive in, talk to the creator and founder, and talk all about neuro-health, brain health, and optimizing performance. Dr. Porter is an award-winning author, educator, consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker with 20 years of experience operating the largest self-help franchise in the world. He's become a highly sought-after expert within the personal improvement industry, having sold over 3 million self-help products worldwide. Dr. Porter has been on the cutting edge of brainwave entrainment technology for 32 years. If you ever had an expert, that's today. I'm super excited.
Dr. Jill 1:34
His newest brain-training platform, BrainTap, is distinctively designed to activate the brain's neuroplasticity. We're going to dive in today about what neuroplasticity is and how to optimize it. The BrainTap headset uses light and sound technology in combination with Dr. Porter's proprietary guided visualization-audio sessions to help people achieve brain fitness, overcome stress, lose weight, stop smoking, manage pain, accelerate learning, enjoy superb sleep, and make any number of lifestyle improvements. He's the author of the award-winning bestseller, Awaken the Genius, Mind Technology for the 21st Century, Thrive in Overdrive, How to Navigate Your Overloaded Lifestyle, among others. Welcome, Dr. Porter. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today.
Dr. Patrick Porter 2:20
It's great to be here, Dr. Jill. Thank you.
Dr. Jill 2:22
Thank you. We met for the first time at A4M, amongst all the symposiums on optimization. That's quite a place. There's lots of technology and lots of things going on. You clearly have some amazing experience. And I always love story. Like, how did you get into brain health? How did you get your Ph.D.? Let's go way back and tell us a little about: Where did you grow up? And then, how did you get into this industry?
Dr. Patrick Porter 2:43
Yes. I grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan. I was very fortunate; it was the first place in the world to have a health food store. Dr. Kellogg had it there. My mother actually sought out an iridologist because there were nine of us; we were all spazzes, and they wanted to put us on medicine. My mom didn't go for that. She basically got us off all the sugars, all the dyes—everything we know to do today, but this was done in the 60s if you can imagine that. That really started our journey. Then my dad, who was a chronic alcoholic, got help with something called the Silva method, which is a meditation practice. He was one of the first Silva instructors in America. He studied with Jose Silva, and my brother did as well. I wasn't old enough yet when they were taking the training, but I attended those classes every other weekend growing up. My dad would go do it all around lower Michigan, and it helped him stop drinking and really changed the direction of our whole life.
Dr. Patrick Porter 3:42
I went to school for electronics first at a school called Ferris State. And then I went to Louisiana Baptist Christian [University], where I got my master's and my Ph.D. in psychology. I don't use much of that anymore. What I do now is basically work in the self-help field. My franchise, which I sold in 2002, was a weight and stop smoking franchise. We had 108 locations when I sold it. Unfortunately, it went out of business in 2013. That's why I'm back out. I sold it in a way that I thought I was going to be set for life, and I was just going to speak and do my thing. But then when it went under, I thought: “I want to create a new version of my MC Square.” That's what it was called in 1989. We were the best new gadget of the year at the Consumer Electronics Show. That was a big move for us. We're actually going to be there this year again.
Dr. Patrick Porter 4:39
We partnered with Human Touch chair [sic] and we'll be at the Consumer Electronics Show again. We've got a few awards. In 2020, we got an award there for the best sleep app; it's called SleepRx. We help people with sleep. Basically, I've been doing a lot of research now. I'll talk about some of that while we're going through it. But we have seven continents right now doing research on BrainTap. The nice thing is that those are all done by third-party universities. One of the things for your listeners: We just beat out opioids in three different studies at the pharmaceutical college down in Brazil for fibromyalgia to show it could help reduce… The equipment was actually designed back in the 80s for pain control. When you lower your stress [hormones] like adrenaline, cortisol, or norepinephrine—those stress hormones are blocking your capacity to be pain-free—your body will naturally create its own opioids and create a pain-free state for you.
Dr. Jill 5:38
Wow. Okay, Dr. Porter, already I'm biting at the bit. There are so many fascinating things. I want to go back just briefly to that Silva experience. For years I have had trouble with classical meditation, but I've worked completely on the Silva method, that visualization, and this realm. I think of it as creative lucid dreaming and creating your own reality. That, for me, has been so profoundly transformative. I don't know if it's just because my brain goes so fast that it's hard to slow down. And you can tell me what's going on. But I will just tell you that I love that you say that because I remember finding that and learning that and being like: “Oh, this is where I meditate. This is my place.” I think for some creatives that it's actually a much healthier space than just pure empty in the mind, right? And you know why. You're going to tell me more.
Dr. Patrick Porter 6:25
Yes. Most people, unfortunately, when we measure their brains before and after they meditate, we very rarely saw someone who didn't stress out their brain. Because the monkey mind does more damage than it does safe. So with Silva, you're going to alpha, and you're going to ‘level,' they call it. Think of that as neutral for the brain. If we can get the brain to just go to neutral, a lot of wonderful things can happen to the body. The stress hormones just drive the body out of regulation. They cause the body to exacerbate things like fear, frustration, anxiety, dementia, and Alzheimer's; those things just spiral out of control with stress.
Dr. Jill 6:59
Oh, I love this. And again, this was almost accidental for me because even before Silva, I knew that when I was in that space—and I didn't know what it was called before—magic happens. Just like meeting the right people and getting… All the random things of life that are “random” are not random. When I'm in that state and I can go there at will, life is so beautiful; I see miracles everywhere. So I love and I want to talk about that because I'm sure it relates to everything else you're doing. But I love that. And then, did you say you're one of nine children?
Dr. Patrick Porter 7:26
Yes, I'm number three in the order.
Dr. Jill 7:29
And did you have brothers or sisters above you?
Dr. Patrick Porter 7:31
I had a brother, Michael, and a sister who is above me. I had three sisters and five brothers.
Dr. Jill 7:37
Wow. Both of us [come from] large families. I was in Illinois, [being] one of five. I'm in the middle—the oldest girl—the second oldest. But there's something about that too that I love. First of all, you learn how to deal with conflict because you have a lot of people in your house. Clearly, your mother and father were amazing people. And all that your dad went through… But I love that little bit because there's this creativity and thing that comes with… Not that we all have to have big families, but there's just a really neat dynamic from that and your midwestern upbringing that I can already see has been a help to you. So then, you went into—you said electrical… What kind of thing was it?
Dr. Patrick Porter 8:14
Yes. I went to electronics. When Star Trek came out and Star Wars and all those, I was just like: “I feel like I'm from the future. I'm just in this past experience.” So, I love doing that. When I went to school, of course, there weren't electronics like there are today. It was more like solenoids, and it was more for working at factories. That wasn't my thing. I kept helping my dad at the seminars, and he said, “You know, you should just go back to school and get your degree and do this with me.” So we just kept doing the seminars on the weekends.
Dr. Jill 8:45
What was the part that you really liked? Clearly, you have a very analytical mind that can solve problems. I can see that, and that makes a great entrepreneur. But what else about the direction that you took was the thing that you love to do most?
Dr. Patrick Porter 9:00
Well, I found that because I was held back in second grade—I tell the story and awaken the genius. I believe everybody has genius potential. I was creative, so I loved to write and draw. I had an art scholarship, and I could care less about math and science. But as soon as my dad taught me to… My dad had a philosophy once he got help: If we got in trouble, we didn't get sent to our room just to think about what we did. My dad would send us to the room with a book. And the book that I got sent to the room with was mostly As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.
Dr. Jill 9:29
Oh, what an amazing father!
Dr. Patrick Porter 9:33
Yes. I'd have to come out of the room and tell him how I was going to apply those principles. Of course, at first, you're like, “Just BS,” and just trying to get out to play with your friends. But eventually, it sank in, and I started to realize: “I love helping people. I love putting together teams.” Even in high school, I put together the first weightlifting team. I put a running team together. Even though I had a lot of [siblings], I was in between the sisters, so I didn't have a lot of brothers. My older brother went off to the military when I was in high school. So I had to get my friends and do the things… I found people who wanted to do the same things I did to be healthy. We did a lot of supplementation even back then. My coach, I remember him saying, “Patrick, don't take that supplement out in public because they're going to think you're doing drugs.” I was just doing [inaudible]. It had a lot of niacin in it. It would turn me red. I ran the quarter mile, so I believe that it helped me get oxygen to my muscles.
Dr. Jill 10:40
You were making NADPH and more NAD from that niacin. Oh my gosh, I love that. That's amazing. It's so interesting, too, because there's so much similarity. I grew up with a nurse for a mother. We had our own farm, lots of organic food, and lots of interest—before it was cool—in farming organic produce and healing yourself. So I definitely have that bend too. And I always joke that I kind of infiltrated the classical medical system, the allopathic system, because I thought, “Here is a great system,” but my heart and mind were much more [into] the natural. So obviously, after that, you worked for your father a little. When was your first book or your first invention?
Dr. Patrick Porter 11:13
In the 1990s, I was asked to do a program for the State of Arizona on DUIs. I worked for a group called the Arizona Health Council. I was writing programs for second-time offenders; it was called Hidden Solutions. Jerry DeShazo wanted to publish it. He said, “If you write this book, I'll publish it.” So, on a napkin, I wrote out the contract. I said, “If I get this book completed in six months, you're going to publish it.” He signed it at the table. In five months, we had the book done, my wife and I. It's a really fun book to read. We wrote it in an accelerated learning fashion.
Dr. Jill 11:50
What was the title of that one, the first?
Dr. Patrick Porter 11:52
It was called Awaken the Genius. One of the things with self-help books [is that] if you want to super read or super learn, what you do is go through and turn all of the italicized and bolded [text] into questions. You just do that first; you don't even try to remember anything. Then you go back through and just answer those questions. And when you do, you'll remember the content of that book much faster. I wrote my book that way so that if somebody's reading it, they can actually get through that book very quickly, even though it's 232 pages because it's written to accelerate your reading. Everything has a right-brain story and left-brain logic—a right-brain story and left-brain logic to get it in because we are very emotional beings, but we justify things with logic. And I did the same thing with Thrive in Overdrive and a couple of my other books.
Dr. Jill 12:39
Absolutely amazing. Now, I don't know if you know, but I'm getting ready—my book is coming out in March. It makes me wonder if I accidentally did that because I thought we have to tell a story. Right brain: Creative. Right? The whole thing is a kind of prescriptive memoir. But then I wanted [to include] the practical left brain [information], so I created these columns and callouts. You could just flip through and just read the callouts and get all the practical left brain [information] or you can dive into the story like a box of chocolates. I didn't know how to do that, but I was like: “I think this is really important,” to have both. And it sounds like what you've clearly proven.
Dr. Patrick Porter 13:10
Especially in self-help because a lot of people who are struggling will read those books. They do need to be a little bit of a novel because people want to hear your story and are interested in that. And then you just slip in a few of those nuggets every now and then, and their lives change. They don't realize what happened because they emotionally bought in while reading.
Dr. Jill 13:30
And of course, we know manifesting is all about that emotional context, right? So you've written all these books, and I'm going to read them all now. I didn't know about you before all this. Take us to BrainTap. You've had a clear journey [through] some other things before that. And then I'll tell you really quickly after you're done how I know about BrainTap.
Dr. Patrick Porter 13:50
All right. Yes. In 2013, I was living in the Bay Area, and my wife and I just had our only grandson—our second grandchild. My wife said: “Hey, I'm going to go move to New Bern, North Carolina. You can come if you want.” It was one of those things. So I said, “Well, if we're going to leave Danville,” which was nice, “and move to North Carolina, then that's where we're going to start the business.” We had a clinic in Pleasanton, just outside the Pleasanton mall there in the Bay area, and we ran that for about five years. I sold that.
Dr. Jill 14:24
What kind of clinic? What were you doing?
Dr. Patrick Porter 14:27
It was therapy. We had people come in. We also had a lot of what would be called ‘biohacking.' If you came to my clinic here in New Bern—I had seven clinics at one time—I have a really nice biohacking lab that we only use for our staff, really. We have four clinics in the area. We're a very small town [with] 38,000 people. But we have four doctors that we allow to send their patients in to use our [equipment]. We have a big light bed, we have infrared saunas, we have vibration acoustics—anything you would think of. The only things we don't have that I'm looking into—there are two things—one is hyperbaric, and then [the other] one is the cryo[therapy]. I'm doing a lot with those. We don't have those. And I'm trying to justify them because we don't see the general public, but I want them for myself.
Dr. Jill 15:14
I totally understand. I've got my PEMF mat here and all kinds of biohacking [gadgets].
Dr. Patrick Porter 15:19
If you came to my [house] when COVID happened, my upstairs with my pool table looks like a biohacking spa because I kept bringing stuff home [and] I wasn't getting down to the office. Someday I'll bring it back to the office. I spend two hours every morning getting ready for the day and just taking care of myself because we're not getting any younger. I want to keep my cells active and energized. But what happened to me was that when we moved here, we drove in and thought, “Well, we're going to set up a spa.” We set up a spa called the Solantis Light Spa. We were going to set up another franchise doing biohacking—one of these rejuvenation kind of spas. We had 200 active clients, and it was going good. But then BrainTap took off, and we said, “You know, we've got to make a decision; either we're going to be a spa,” because it took a lot of energy, “or we're going to do BrainTap.” And I'm glad we did BrainTap because it's just taken off like crazy. We're in 120 countries. A4M was the best event of our lives. It was awesome. We had 16 chairs there where people could try out BrainTap, and we were busy the whole time. I designed a piece of technology to go with it called The NeuralCheck where we can take five minutes. We can tell somebody nine different parameters of the nervous system, and then we can show them pre and post—how they're doing. We can show them the effects of sleep or not sleep, and things of that nature. So it basically builds compliance for our clients because they need it measured, right? So they want to know something's actually happening. In the process, we were just going to be a small business making some equipment, with me going out. Now we're huge. We're three times bigger than my franchise was already. And we've been doing it since 2013. It just keeps expanding and growing. One of the nice things is that we have 3,000 clinics out there that are using it in their clinical practice. We're helping people every day by doing that. I think the last time we looked, it was over a million listens to the app, and the app is only a little over two years old.
Dr. Jill 17:27
Dr. Porter, I just have the biggest smile. And I hate that you had to have difficulty with the franchise, but what a blessing because look what's happened. And, I'll tell you what my experience was. I'm a mold expert, so I deal with a lot of mold toxicity and patients who have massive limbic activation. We have to deal with that on some level in order for them to get well, and it's 100%. You'll probably understand this, but as I was researching for my book, I came across the research about the inhalation of chemicals and the limbic system to their cribriform plate. It actually accentuates limbic activation through the amygdala. All that to say, I realized I saw this in practice. I saw every single person 100% who had mold, even if they've done the work, they've done therapy, they've been NLP, whatever kind of thing they've done to tap neuroplasticity, they still have a trauma response. I'm like, “What is the deal here?” Because even if people are very connected or whatever things they have done… And then I realized it's a chemical trauma response, and it's in the literature. So for me, on my list of limbic retraining right at the top is BrainTap. But, how cool to meet you. So, how did that come about? Tell us the story of BrainTap. And then I want to go into, for people listening, what's BrainTap? What is it?
Dr. Patrick Porter 18:40
When we created the BrainTap, at first it was a pair of sunglasses that had LEDs in them. We used those for years, but in 2013, I wanted to build it all into one headset. It used to be modularized, so think of it like a stereo with three different pieces. Because of technology, of course, electronics have all shrunk, so now we can fit it all on one side of the ear. Plus, with the app on the phone, the app does most of the work now. So the app drives the lights, and we put lights in the ears. I'm also the Dean of Brain-Based Medicine at Quantum University. We did a study on mold toxicity and helping people overcome it. I didn't do whatever the doctor did to clear out the mold. But their big idea was that people get psychosomatically triggered even though they don't have the thing. It makes sense with the amygdala being hijacked and then emotions taking over. But what we did with autistic children was do a study, and parents were going, “There's no way my kids are going to look at that; they're going to go crazy,” and things like that. And of course, a lot of these kids have mold and things like that going on; they're very sensitive. Like you're saying, those are neurotoxins that are taking over. They basically hijack the person's identity and who they are; they're not the same person because it's almost like a reconfiguration of the hard drive.
Dr. Patrick Porter 20:10
There's something called the Nogier Frequencies. Dr. Nogier was an iridologist. There are places in the ear where all the junction points come through the ear. When you're doing acupuncture, you can do needles in there and get different parts of the body. Our doctors were using lasers to do this. I said to my manufacturer, “Can we make a set of earphones that have lights in them that would equal the dosage of a laser?” It's low-level light, but it takes 20 minutes to get the same millijoules as a laser. You can do it in a minute with a laser. But when you're wearing the headset, it takes 20 minutes. But what it does is bathe the ear, and then, through something called photobiomodulation it moves throughout the whole body.
Dr. Patrick Porter 20:53
Right now, more than ever, we need to energize the brain. The brain needs ATP production, vasodilation, blood flow, and nitric oxide release—all those things that light does. The best way to get it into the brain is through the eyes. Your eyes have over 300 times more mitochondria than even the brain. The brain has more overall, but the eyes literally take in light and transmit light. We now know this as a true fact. Maybe later we can talk about the body being a light being. We're all light beings, and there is science out there that shows it. But in the process of what's going on, we're going, “How can we tune the body up?”
Dr. Patrick Porter 21:31
If you think about when you said alpha going to level with Silva, that's like going to the river, going to an ocean, or going to a lake. When you're sitting beside it, the IVO potential of that water is 10-hertz frequency. So that's why people go there and just relax; they just chill out. When we go to a mountain top like where you're at… I love Colorado; that's where I convinced my wife that I was romantic. We went up to Breckenridge when the tree lighting was back in—gosh! I don't know what was it—'88 or '89. We were up in the mountains. Where the tree lines are, it's about 7.8 hertz—the Schumann frequency. They say that's the frequency of the planet. These are two different frequencies that, when we cross over them, the brain reorganizes itself. We have a gamma burst, and we have a delta burst. Most people don't even talk about this.
Dr. Patrick Porter 22:29
For instance, when Li-Huei Tsai did experiments at MIT with a 40-hertz frequency and dementia, I went and visited her. I said, “What's happening with that?” because they didn't do any follow-up studies. I know what's going to happen: After they do that for a while, the brain is going to just omit it. It's going to be like living next to a paper mill. Basically, the people living there don't smell that paper mill like everybody else does, even though odor has mass, right? It's affecting them, but they don't know it. What I told them was, “Each one of ours changes just a little bit every time, so the brain can't learn the pattern.” People go, “What do you mean it can't learn the pattern?” Our brain is so great. Like in the movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman, they dropped the toothpicks on the ground, and he says, “1,143.” They go, “How did you know that?” He counted them. Well, our brain does the same thing. Our eyes take in literally 10,000 pieces of information every second, but it feeds the brain over 2 to 3 million pieces of information every second. Neuroscience would tell us we're making this all up anyway. So, where's that information coming from? It's because we're always assuming [and] making assumptions because life is happening so fast.
Dr. Patrick Porter 23:38
What we did was start to put this pattern together. What could we do? In the 80s, we only had biofeedback. We had to measure skin temperature, respiration, and heart rate. It was very rudimentary. If I went to biohacking with that now, they'd laugh at me; it's like nothing. But back then, that was really big stuff. If you've got somebody's hands warm, their headaches went away. That still works today. But what's nice with neurofeedback is that we can measure brain waves.
Dr. Patrick Porter 24:08
And now we know, for instance, that when we're in an alpha state, we're telling our brain to create more acetylcholine, which is the feel-good, love-kind of neurotransmitter. When we go into beta, we're telling our brain to create more GABA. That happens to be the precursor to DMT. There are, of course, 54 different neurotransmitters. So as we go through these cycles in the brain, our neurological bank account gets reset. The other thing is with toxins—we talk about toxins all the time—it's either thoughts, traumas, or toxins causing the trouble. And most people don't realize that if they're not getting level 4 sleep, their brain is not detoxing. We tell the doctors that. In 2015, when Scientific American came out with that glial lymphatic system, they just finally found it. I mean, when you went to school and when I went to school, in our physiology books, the lymph system didn't go past the neck.
Dr. Patrick Porter 25:04
So, we're learning so much more, even about our bodies, right now. We were taught that everywhere there's a blood vessel, there's a lymph vessel, but somehow the brain missed out, which we now know isn't true; it's just like that blood-brain barrier. So if we can get that deep level of relaxation [and] that deep level of sleep, now we're cleaning out our brain. I know for a fact now that there's a lot of evidence out there that shows that if you have a leaky gut, you have a leaky brain because we have a brain biome and we have a gut biome. My philosophy that most people would hear on podcasts that I've done is… And I'm writing a book with Rishika Sakaria, [who] was Head of Health at Google. We're writing a book about the three waves of wellness. Number one is nutrition because you can't out-think a bad diet. So many people think I'm just going to work on my brain. Like you said, they did NLP; they did this. Well, you've got to clear out the toxins. If somebody came in to see us, the first thing we did was put them on a 21-day detox because their liver was just polluted. I mean, you can't get rid of the fat. Basically, you're going to have a backup in the system. Number two is that you've got to move and breathe. That's really important for the brain. The reason that we have such a big brain is we decided to stand up and look along the horizon and balance ourselves. As we get better at looking more intelligent with age, that brain wave that actually atrophies is called SMR. It's between the beta brain [waves] and the alpha brain waves. The SMR is for the vestibular system. We train people to do that in the morning. We call it ‘digital coffee' because it will trigger a little cortisol and give people that natural rush. It's important that we use the cycles of the sun. When you think about BrainTap, I think: What did they do in ancient traditions? And how can we mimic that and do it with modern technology? When we were hunters and gatherers, at the end of the night, we would build a fire, [and] we would watch that fire. Most people don't realize that every fire crackles at 10-hertz frequency. So while you're watching the fire, your brain waves are calming down. Your body is being bathed in acetylcholine. You're basically winding down. Now, maybe occasionally, somebody would go get some more wood, but more [often] than not, when the fire is burned out, they go to bed. They don't turn on another channel and keep watching TV till 3:00 in the morning. What most people don't realize with the brain is that the brain is tuned to the light of the sun. When we think about melatonin and things of that nature, melatonin isn't just for sleep; it's for every cell of the body. So, every hour before 12:00 that we get into bed is worth two hours after 12:00. So if you really want to sleep better, just adjust your time. Get up at 4:00 in the morning and go to sleep at 9:00, or go to sleep at 10:00 and get up at 5:00, or whatever. That's what I like to do. That way, in the morning, nobody's calling me. I'm on the East Coast. When I was on the West Coast, there was no safety zone—people would call at all hours of the day.
Dr. Jill 28:03
Right. The best time to write is that morning, right? Amazing. Oh, my goodness. [There are] so many pearls here. A lot of my listeners have had a chronic infection like Lyme, Epstein-Barr reactivation, or all those things, or the toxic load, which we talked about. And as we already talked about, mold in particular is very neurotoxic and can sabotage personality [and] mood, absolutely. I'll tell you a really quick story. I have a neurologist friend who lived in a house in Texas that was very full of stachybotrys; it's toxic. She and her daughter saw me; she's doing well. But how the story goes is that later they found out there was a homicide and a suicide in the house prior, and there was this black mold. There's no doubt in my mind that those were related to the chemistry of that toxic insult. It's crazy, isn't it? But you know it's true, just as well as I do.
Dr. Patrick Porter 28:54
Oh yes. I mean, almost every mass shooter was eating candy. A neurotoxin is sugar. They say if it were on the market today, it'd have to go through FDA approval. They go, “What do you mean?” I say, “Just give it to kids at a birthday party and see what happens.” They never slow down the sugar, right? They just give it to them, and then they wonder why they're getting into trouble. The key, I think, with toxins—we're not going to avoid toxins in our environment—[is that] we have to have periods where we're not just loading our body up with food. I like intermittent fasting. It doesn't have to be every day, but do some of that because the body is the subconscious. Your brain is writing its code into the body. I love Louise Haye because that's the book my dad had us read, too, growing up—You Can Heal Your Life. It always made sense. Even though sometimes they didn't want to believe it when something was happening, if you're really honest with yourself, this happens to everybody—we all have a format that we follow.
Dr. Jill 29:53
Right. It's interesting, as you mentioned, with Rain Man and some of the subconscious [thought processes]. One thing I've always tried to explain is that in medical school, we're taught a very analytical, old, analog way of processing [using the] left brain, extremely logistical pattern recognition. I was an engineer—[that was my] background. I always say that works really well for hundreds, maybe thousands, of pieces of data in a medium amount of time. And then as I've grown in my skill and in some of the things you were talking about here, what I find is the power of the subconscious. Just like you mentioned with Rain Man, I can take literally millions of pieces of data in a fraction of a second and have a knowing that's beyond the conscious knowing. What I'll do is I'll still use that left brain to prove and to show the tests and everything. We need the science to prove what we already know about this. But this power that I found and teaching patients now to go there… because that's where the healing happens too, right? Our subconscious will put anything into play that we give it. I learned that a while back, and it's been so profound in my practice because I can come to conclusions and answers that I never logically could have figured out. And always—you know this—100% of the time, I'm right on because that subconscious is so powerful. But how would you teach the average person, whether it's a doctor or a teacher or an entrepreneur? How do we tap into that spot of knowing?—because there's a powerful amount of knowledge in our subconscious.
Dr. Patrick Porter 31:11
We have a river right down from us, the Tar River. So, if I said, “That Tar River, it's never the same river… ” We call it by the same name, but it's different every day. Our body, when they came out with the genetic map, they only got 1%. They didn't get the genetic map. I mean, could you imagine going to your boards and passing 1% of the questions? But in 2018, they actually found out that 99% change every 40 seconds. So that means the molds that you have exposure to, the food you have exposure to, the thoughts you're thinking, the environment you're in—literally everything has to do with how you show up. And what we now know is: How quickly can you change? I have a saying that I got from Mike Tyson, actually, when he said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” The problem is: How does your body respond when you get hit?—because we're all going to be exposed. I live in the South. We had this house checked for mold. My daughter actually got out of an apartment because she started having headaches. I said, “You've got mold in that house.” So we had a test kit. We had a tester come out, and he said, ‘Yes.' They gave the landlord everything they needed to change. They said, ‘Leave!' So that landlord probably just rented it out to somebody else and didn't even care because people think: “That's just mold. That's not doing anything.” But the reality is it's changing who you are. Words themselves can change 2,300 gene expressions. [That's] just the words. So when you go in there and you start feeling bad and you start using low energy or low vibration thoughts, that translates into hedonistic behavior, and that spirals out. A lot of times, these people will start eating junk because their energy is meeting their environment at that level. We need to bring them above that level so they can realize that they need to, first of all, get out of that environment and then give themselves permission to heal.
Dr. Jill 33:09
Oh, my goodness. I love that. And you're speaking on one thing [where] there's not a lot of talk about it. I know you'll get this. I have seen over and over in my own life and the lives of my patients: Mold will sabotage insight. It's this bizarre, evil thing. But truly, literally, even after years and years and becoming the expert in mold, I can still be in a new exposure, and later I can look back [and say], “Oh, that was mold—clearly!” But in the midst of it, it's sometimes hard to have that insight. Any thoughts on why that sabotage occurs?—because it's very bizarre to me. It's almost like it helps its survival, but it literally takes away insight.
Dr. Patrick Porter 33:45
Yes. Well, I don't know why it's taking away insight. But that amygdala is going to hijack. You know, that's what happens when we get angry, right? We get angry with somebody, and then afterward we go: “Dang! I wish I wouldn't have gotten so angry and upset.”
Dr. Jill 33:56
Oh, see, that's what it is. It's probably a hijacking of the limbic system, and then you override the frontal cortex, right?
Dr. Patrick Porter 34:02
Yes. The executive function goes out the window. Now you're in basically survivor mode. I call it a survivor brain or a thriving brain. Most people are running around with their survivor brains, which means they're not digesting or metabolizing their food. They're not rebuilding their body in a healthy way. It's like pulling a parachute all day long. They get to their easy care at the end of the day, and they pass out. They drink their six beers. They wake up in the morning, rinse, repeat, and do it again. They don't realize that it's that lifestyle that's causing it.
Dr. Jill 34:37
Yes. And I love that your foundation is that too. And even your feedback on… That's what I've always done. Right now I have the Oura ring, and there are other things out there. But just that feedback: Say I do a PEMF mat; how does it affect my deep sleep? When do I get a bed? I am always thinking about: What intervention did I do today to optimize performance or sleep? And then, did it work? And was it effective? You've done that your whole life. Back to BrainTap, a lot of my patients, like I said, [have] mold issues, Lyme issues, or whatever [else]. How could they use it? Give us practical tips.
Dr. Patrick Porter 35:10
We have a Lyme program. We don't have a mold-specific program, but we do have one for Lyme because we have a lot of doctors working with that. It's something called ‘psychoimmunology.' For those listeners who are familiar, that means your psychology actually affects your immune system. You have a thinking immune system, right? There's a reason, when you think about [it], that doctors don't get sick as much, because they're above the illness—although some do, of course. Most of them are like, “That's not me.” If you can bring your attitude or your positivity up, your immune system actually functions better. I tell people that white marker cells are like Navy seals; if they have something to fight, they're really good, but if they don't, they fight each other. If you're systematically triggering that response without the stimulus, that can build its own program. Most people don't realize what happened with Pavlov and his dogs when he did the study ringing the bell. They all know about that, but they don't know that the study kept going. The dogs started salivating when the guards came in to open the door to ring the bell. Then they started salivating when the guards walked down the hall to open the door to ring the bell. And then, when they stopped the experiment, the dogs continued to salivate at 6:00 in the morning. That's what happens to our bodies over and over again. So that's why we need to clear out our brain, and our thinking, and really resolve that. What BrainTap does too on a physical level is it's going to bring light into the brain. Sound does it too. Sound brings energy. If you've ever been to a party and maybe you didn't really want to go there but your significant other had you go, and then they're playing songs from your high school and pretty soon you're tapping your toe [and] you're getting ready to dance. And they go, “I thought you didn't want to go.” Well, that music actually got the cells moving. So with light, it's much quicker. It creates that vasodilation, that blood flow, [and that] circulation. Everywhere there's a blood vessel, there's a lymph vessel built. So, imagine: Every time you do BrainTap, you're building new supply lines for your brain to bring nutrients into the brain and building new supply lines to move the toxins out of the brain. It needs to happen all the time because, after [age] 28, we're in a neural pruning big time. We're always in neural pruning. That's why it's really important to do new things, different things [such as] drive home from work differently, color with the left hand if you're right-handed—all these things, just to keep your neurology exercised.
Dr. Jill 37:46
Yes, neuroplasticity at its best. I have a funny story that really accentuates fighting the immune system. I went through cancer at [age] 25 and then Crohn's at [age] 26. And it was always: “I'm going to fight this. I'm going to overcome this. I'm going to beat this.” And I did. Then I got mold toxicity in my late 30s, and I was fighting. I was like: “I'm going to overcome this. I'm going to figure it out.” One day, I'm walking behind my house, and I have this little epiphany like, “Wait, this fighting analogy is killing me,” because the problem with mold is that it triggers the innate immune system. Just as you said, it fights itself, and that battle inside of us with our innate immune system is actually causing more harm inside. I just had this ‘Aha!' Like, “Oh, wait, “This fight analogy that saved me all my life is now going to hurt me.” I thought, “Okay, how can I meditate on something different?” I took the little minions from [the movie] Despicable Me, the little yellow guys. I started meditating on those as my immune system, where they're just whistling and holding hands and escorting the mold out, but with the most friendly and joyful attitude. I literally, day by day by day, would do my walk and meditate on minions and my immune system. Literally—you know how this works—my immune system shifted. That was one of the most profound things in how I got well—[by] literally shifting that fight analogy. I literally feel like I reprogrammed my immune system through minions.
Dr. Patrick Porter 39:00
Sure, yes. I think that's great. I mean, there are a lot of stories. [For example], in our cancer program, we use the one with sheep [that] eat up the cancer. There are a lot of different metaphors people use that work, so [use] whatever works for you to give you that positive attitude, as long as you feel empowered. One of the things about depression—depression is lack of hope. So, if you feel like you don't have any hope because you feel so miserable, what I like to tell people is that if you're going through that right now, everyone's going through the dark night of the soul at some point. Campbell said about The Hero's Journey: We're all getting our superpowers. So when my dad got his superpowers, he helped me. We've helped millions of people. You never know what's going to happen. It's when we overcome those limitations and empower ourselves… And then one of the natural parts of The Hero's Journey is you've got to share that story. You've got to get out there and share it. A lot of people don't go that far, but every person out there, I believe, has a story to tell and can help people because they know people. If we're going to change this world to make it a more peaceful, loving place that isn't so fear-based, we've got to start trusting each other again and things of that nature.
Dr. Jill 40:12
Brilliantly said! This is so fun; I could talk to you for hours. What takeaway would you give us out of all the wonderful stuff we've talked about for someone [who is] listening?—maybe they are depressed, anxious, or really struggling. What's your one takeaway?
Dr. Patrick Porter 40:26
It might not be your mind. It could be your physiology. Like you're saying, it could be a neurotoxin. It might not be mold; it might be Lyme; it might be something else. Start doing the easy things first. Get those off the list. And what will happen is: Start physically exercising, moving, and breathing. Start doing some brain fitness. We can share a free link if you want. They can go and download my book, Thrive in Overdrive. They can read that at BrainTap.info and they get 15 days on the app. They can go try that out for free. No credit card is necessary. They can just get on there, put it in there, and then at 15 days, if you like it, you can sign up, but if you don't, it just goes away. But I want everybody to try it. I was an angry young kid—I tell the story—[and] I thought God's only job was to make my life miserable until I realized that God was trying to show me how to do what I needed to do, and I wasn't listening. I do believe that everything happens… Like you're talking about synchronicity. So many times, I'll be talking about somebody I haven't talked about in a while, [and] they'll text me or call me—things like that. There is a connection here. People need to understand there is a connection. In the “blue zones” that are around the world, [where we] talk about people who live the longest and the best lives, they have a support group. Figure out who your support group is and find people who aren't energy vampires but who are going to help you grow and learn where you're at. There are a lot of reasons to be angry and upset with everything going on. But the reality is that this is the best time in the history of the world to be on the planet. We have a chance right now to rewrite how it's going to turn out, so I think we'd stay positive and work for that.
Dr. Jill 42:12
Oh, I love, love, love it. Like I said, we'll have to have you back because this is so impactful. I love the work you're doing. Thank you for making such a difference. Thank you for not retiring because we're all so grateful. All the links you shared, I'll be sure and get those from you and share [them]. If you're listening to this, wherever you're listening, you can find the links. Dr. Porter, thank you. Thank you for being the human being that you are and bringing light, love, progress, and solutions to the world.
Dr. Patrick Porter 42:38
Well, thank you, Dr. Jill. We're out to better a billion brains, and whoever's listening, that's the brain we're talking about now. So, let's do it.
Dr. Jill 42:44
Thank you so much!
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