Episode 73: HYLANE Program for Depression & Anxiety with Dr. Robert Hedaya, MD
Show Summary:
Note: This podcast includes some visuals shared by Dr. Hedaya, we recommend watching this episode on our Youtube channel to see the visuals.
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How can we get to the root causes of anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders?
Today we are excited to offer you a conversation with Dr. Robert Hedaya about how he approaches psychiatric disorders in his clinic to produce long lasting change for his patients.
This conversation discusses root causes of psychiatric disorders, how lifestyle and diet can affect mental health, and how Dr. Hedaya uses HYLANE therapy in his practice to treat psychiatric disorders.
My name is Dr. Andrew Wong, co-founder of CIH. This is a podcast dedicated to transforming the consciousness around what it means to be healthy and understanding the root causes of disease and wellness.
Don’t miss this transformative conversation about the cutting edge techniques that Dr. Hedaya uses to change the way we are approaching psychiatric disorders.
Listen to the full conversation:
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Full Transcript:
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I think the main thing people should know is that most psychiatric disorders are caused by physiological problems. Right? That's one piece. The second piece is we have massive increase in psychiatric disorders because of the physiology because of the hormone interrupting chemicals. And also because of the breakdown in our society can we give cannot separate the loss of community that's rampant? It's it's so powerful to, to not be in a herd think of it. We're herd animals, you're out in the plains with the savanna wondering aloud on your own, you know, you're going to be much more stressed and much more vulnerable. So we don't have communities. That's a big factor in increasing mental health. So when you're looking at your kid and say, Wow, what's wrong with him or her or your spouse, whatever. Understand there are real reasons that things that they don't know about that you don't know about things that are not in their control. Yes, it's their responsibility. Yes. But it's really just the tip of the iceberg, the psychology
Dr. Andrew Wong:
How can we get to the root causes of anxiety, depression and other psychiatric disorders? Today, we are excited to offer you a conversation with Dr. Robert Hedaya, America's leading functional psychiatrist about how he approaches brain health and mental health in his clinic to produce long lasting change for his patients. This conversation discusses root causes of psychiatric disorders, how lifestyle and diet can affect mental health, and how Dr. Hadiya uses Highline therapy. That's h y l. A N E therapy, in his practice to treat psychiatric disorders. My name is Dr. Andrew Wong, co founder of capital, integrative health. This is a podcast dedicated to transforming the consciousness around what it means to be healthy, and understanding the root causes of both disease and wellness. Don't miss this transformative conversation about the cutting edge techniques that Dr. Hadiya uses to change the way we're approaching mental health. Welcome, Bob. And so glad to have you here.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
That's great to be with Andrew, thank you very much. Look, look forward to our discussion.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Yeah, same here. Same here. So as one of America's really leading functional psychiatrists, I think kind of let's just get started with the basics about how did you get into psychiatry, mental health, and then kind of later, how did you get more into a functional approach?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
No, it's great question. I kind of like telling the story. You know, I was gonna be a surgeon, actually, I was matched for surgery. And then I had a great I disliked psychiatry thoroughly. And then I had an elective in my senior year in medical school, and I had a great teacher who taught me hypnosis in about 10 minutes, and then had me hypnotize a young kid who had abdominal pain, which they couldn't, they couldn't find an etiology or cause for it. And so I went up and hypnotize them, and then age regressed. And backwards to age three, who's 10 years old, they went back at age three. I was like, Oh, he didn't tell me how to bring him back. Revised a little bit. But the bottom line is, he did great. And actually his pain went away. And I was blown away by the power of the mind. And I was like, Wow, this psychiatry is the way to go for me. So I switched into psychiatry. Then when I went into psychiatry at Georgetown and National Institute of Mental Health, I did my training both places. And then came out and just started doing cognitive behavioral therapy and psychopharmacology and some group therapy, just kind of what I was taught and, and then I had a woman who had panic attacks for a year and they did not respond to anything. And I finally woke up and looked under the hood, you know, more carefully and found that her MCV you know, the size of a red blood cells was a little bit larger. 101 upper limit is 100. And so I did a little research because I really didn't know what it was. And so it could be a beat 12 problem. So I did a schillings test no longer available now but it did a schillings test gave a B 12 injection and one injection, her Panic was gone. And I was like, wow, what else am I missing? And that's, that's how it started.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
So satisfying to look under the hood, especially when people have been going to different clinicians over the years are just struggling with those problems by themselves, you know, and then they're getting frustrated and then thinking that they're, there's no answer. There's no hope. And then, in a way this kind of medicine gives people hope.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yes, yes. Then you feel, I'm sure you feel the same way. You know, it's kind of like, there's almost always an answer, you know.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
So what are the most common kind of conditions that you see, you know, nowadays in your practice, and, and if you can, let's go I'd first and then we'll kind of get into what we want to talk about in terms of the different technology that you've introduced in innovated here. So kind of the maybe the top three to five conditions you can you see nowadays, although in functional medicine, that might be a loaded question, a lot of things connected.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
If you look on my website, I was kind of looking at it, I did, always, always things we treat, and I'm like, this is a treating all these things. You know, I'm a psychiatrist. But the reality is functional medicine is such a broadly applicable method, because it deals with kind of all chronic, lots of chronic conditions. So I ended up accidentally learn how to treat osteoporosis, but I don't really treat anyone directly for osteoporosis, but they come to me with a major depression, you know, and they happen to have osteoporosis, osteoporosis tends to get better. So what do I treat, major things that I treat are depression, mood disorders, let's say would be a major category, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia would be a major category. I'm treating, you know, early cognitive decline in early dementia, and aphasia, we have actually reversed a couple of cases of aphasia. We'll talk about that later. And, you know, we'll treat anxiety disorders, obviously, these a little tough, we've had real success with OCD, but the patients have to really be willing to do what they know they need to do. And some patients with OCD won't do that. And some do, and the ones that do get very, they get better, pretty quickly. PTSD, we work with PTSD, and add, you know, this standard psychiatric stuff and, and cognitive decline. That's kind of how I would say that I don't, I have had success with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. However, however, there's a big however, the patients don't really stay on the program, they get better, and then they drop everything. And so I really kind of stay away from that, because it's a lot of effort, a lot of energy, you know, how it is with the functional medicine takes a lot of work. And then to put in that time and energy and money. And then the patient goes off the
Dr. Andrew Wong:
program I treated someone with with Walsh, I know, you teach the watch, you know, Institute method as well. And then they got better he started having a job, start having friends, and then they dropped off, and they totally went back. So is that a social support issue? Or what is that?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
No, I think there's I don't know, if it's like an early emergence of the psych psych psychotic state. It could be an early emergence, like it's working for a while that it stops working with the psychotic state, they, they kind of become a little paranoid, distrustful, and then they, they refuse to cooperate, I don't know if it's that. But you know, we have non compliance or failure to comply with a lot of people. So it's hard to really, you know, pin it down to that it's a hard program, changing your life, your lifestyle, your diet on a permanent basis, is ill, and they don't have the bandwidth, they don't have much wiggle room or reserve. So if they kind of go off the program a little bit, it's probable that the psychosis charges and then you're, you're just out of control, you know,
Dr. Andrew Wong:
and I can, and like you said, there's not enough margin there, there's probably not as much margin for them on their lifestyle, to you know, to not to stick with it, they have to really stick with it. kind of wanted to talk about some other things I've listened to, you speak a lot recently about how, you know, mental health is almost over. I don't know if overdiagnosis is the right word, but kind of like this idea that once someone has a mental health condition, they have it for life, or they're kind of stuck with it, just like when people like go to the endocrinologist or primary doctor, and they're like, you have diabetes, and it's like a life sentence or something. Can you speak to that interaction between mental health, physical health and how we can kind of move? Move past the 1500s? Finally, basically?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, right. So I'll tell you, I have kind of become convinced that most psychiatric stuff is biologically based. And that what we're talking when we say, is a mental disorder or a psychological disorder, that it's not now are there psychological issues? Yeah, look, you have a chronic problem. There's going to be a psychological overlay. Right? But I think it's number one really important to understand that most things have an underlying biological basis. Now, there are people who have character issues. All you have to do is read the paper and look at our leaders. Boom, you've got it. But there are character logical issues, right. And character can be changed, right, but personality is kind of inborn. In other words, are you harm avoidant? Or you're novelty seeking? Are you reward the pen? And, you know, what's How is your biology to and that's kind of its innate, it's modified by maternal, you know, or the primary caregiver is influenced in the early years and peers when you grow up, but but I would say that much of what we're dealing with is biologically based. And it's, it's just pretty clear. And now as when we get into the quantitative EEG, some of the stuff that I see just blows me away just blows me away.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Yeah, yeah. I think I think we do want to get into that. Just a second. Just a few other kind of intro questions here. So talking about the different, you know, major things that you see from a clinical mental health perspective, what are some of those common biological root causes for those conditions that you see are their overarching umbrella kind of themes that our listeners can kind of gravitate towards in terms of like, Hey, what's going on with anxiety or depression or PTSD?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, so unfortunately, I can't narrow it that narrow it down to just a few more common things. Because, you know, when I when I evaluate somebody, it's like Bredesen talked about 36 holes in your roof, you know, 36 problems, you know, it's more than 36 problems. There's hundreds of potential problems, and everyone's got their own unique,
Dr. Andrew Wong:
pretty expensive, handy person, you know, to fix all those. I don't know. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I was I joke around I say, you know, like, working with me is like going to the Mayo Clinic except all the 12 doctors, they're all in my head. You know, we're we're gi we do immunology, we do infectious disease with you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, it's all we do all of those things. So I mean, the the big buckets are the things that are on the functional medicine matrix, you know, digestion, nutrition, immune function and dysfunction and, and hormones and toxins and epi genetics and structural issues. And then lifestyle issues at sleep and, you know, rejuvenation, you know, those are the big buckets. But within those kits, you know, there are many, many, many causes, you know.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
So today we want to talk about hyaline which, I want to ask you how you came up the acronym because I'm a big fan of acronyms, but it basically it sounds like it stands for hyperbaric oxygen laser therapy, and then neural therapy or neurofeedback, neural neural exercises. Does hyaline mean anything else? Besides that? I know, I just it's a fun acronym question really first before
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I was just I was just, you know, take the first it just popped into my head. Yeah. And, you know, I was talking with somebody about it. And it just popped into my head. I thought, Oh, that's a nice way of putting it together, you know.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
And so let's talk about what it is what Highline is, how does it work? And how does it work for different conditions that you see?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, so Highline is hyperbaric oxygen, right? So hyperbaric oxygen, people may know, is being in a pressurized container 1.3 1.4 atmospheres pressure, which is equivalent to about 10 feet underwater to as high as two and a half. Or you me could go up to four atmospheres, we don't do that. And the idea is that this actually, through multiple mechanisms improves blood flow, right, you're putting things under pressure. So the the small capillaries open up, you have more oxygenation, more nutrient delivery, you have changes in, in free radical production, stem cell production, lots of lots of case, lots of mechanisms of action, and it's helpful in healing the brain, even from head trauma, that has been years before. Now, it doesn't revive dead cells that brain cells. But if there are cells that are kind of liminal, like I have to say that kind of on the edge, they're alive, but they're not really doing too well. It can help those those things. And we've seen, you know, based on the on the cue EEG that we do that there's clear evidence that it actually can improve head injury post yours post the head injury, so So that's useful. That's the hyperbaric oxygen, and you'd spend maybe an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the protocol in the oxygen chamber, maybe doing various things. And so that's one piece of it. The next thing is the the QE G guided laser. So basically, we do a quantitative EEG. And I guess I guess I'm not sure your listeners know what that is.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Yeah, let's definitely take a step back. What's the difference between quantitative and qualitative EEG I think most people are familiar with EEG if someone has a seizure, they go to see a neurologist to get a diagnosis or have potentially like a seizure or something like that. What's the difference in that kind of EEG and a client annotated EEG.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
So the quantitative EEG is fascinating really. And basically, if people, you know, put on a cap and the cap has 19 points at which it measures the electrical energy that your brain is producing, and it can do this accurately relay through the scale, and then there's a, an algorithm that has been worked out is called the reverse solution, which actually, amazingly, can actually print, you know, figure out what the electrical energy is not only on the surface of your brain eat but even deeper in your brain in all of these different areas, in lots of different areas. And then that is actually put into an image. So you can actually see the surface of the brain and the networks in the brain. And I'll show you some of this later, and even a nuclei in the brain. And what I've found is that it correlates this in the literature too. It correlates with diffusion tensor imaging, it correlates with neuro reader. I actually just last week was working on a patient's plan, and was correlating her Huey G with her neuro reader volumetric MRI, which gives us the detailed in lots of specific areas in the brain. And it was actually a really nice correlation
Dr. Andrew Wong:
between nice, okay, didn't know that. Yeah,
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
yeah. So that's, so that's the quantitative EEG. So we take the quantitative EEG, and I've learned how to read it. And I'm still learning frankly, it's a very complex tool. And, and then I based on the symptoms, and based on what I see, in the cue EEG, I decided where I'm going to apply the third the laser, the laser is coherent light, meaning all the the photons in the light are actually in sync with each other. And you know, peaks and troughs like the waves in the ocean, they're actually in sync with each other and the laser, you apply it to different areas in the brain depending on the symptoms and the cue EEG and, and then about 2.64% of the light penetrates through the skull. And and then you know, that's what you do. And the last part of this is neural exercise. And I didn't say neurofeedback, I said neural exercise because you're basically exercising the neurons in the brain in a targeted way. And sometimes it's with neurofeedback, sometimes with exercises, like brain HQ is a good, good platform. There are other things that people can do as well. So it's a combination of those things. So I have base those on a foundation of functional medicine, meaning the patient has done their functional functional medicine. And then typically, I would go in and do this. More recently, however, I have two patients who had aphasia, meaning difficulty speaking. One woman was a 72 year old African American woman who had to beat diabetes. She was obese, she had dementia, she had aphasia as you could only speak a few words, really. And I was like, you know, I don't know, I don't think she doesn't want to do a program show on change or cheat. You know, this is really, her husband begged me to please treat her begged me begged me so I said, well, let's just try the laser. You know, just try the laser. We did the cue EEG, I did the laser. And she started talking. It was like, I started crying and he started crying. And she started talking, you know, it's just incredible. Now, she wasn't normal. She was about 75% Normal. I was able to eventually have a session with her for 45 minutes, just her and I we had a psychotherapy session. And so she had a maybe about 20 treatments, and then have another case like that also with Aphasia of someone who came to me from Illinois, and we just did this so that's
Dr. Andrew Wong:
incredible results. So this vascular related aphasias like like post stroke or something or No, these
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
are not post stroke. These are more neuro neurodegenerative. So now okay, you know, now not post stroke. tried it on one guy who had a young guy, young guy who had a stroke, who's in his mid 30s. We did a few treatments. It wasn't clear. I thought he was doing a little better, but it wasn't really clear. So it may and it doesn't mean it's gonna work for everybody. We don't know yet. There are some people have dramatic results. And I can actually if you ready, I'll show you a couple of slides. Yeah, let's dive in. So this is a cue EEG. There's a woman who will actually show you. We published this article here just last March. She was about 50. He had mild cognitive impairment. She was having trouble with cognition she had something called prosopagnosia. So she couldn't remember faces. So she met you in the morning, she would not remember that she met you in the afternoon. So that she had for about seven years. And she also had absent see her. So, which were never diagnosed. So we did a functional medicine program for about six months. And she was feeling better in many ways, but she was still having the pros up agnosia. And you know, still some trouble with finding words here and there, and cognitive things, etc. So then I did a cue EEG and I was shocked to see her brain was still actually pretty dysregulated. And this here, I'll just orient your viewers. You can you see my cursor? And? Yes, okay, good. So here are her eyes, right? Her ears are here. And this is the back of her head. And anything that's gray is normal, anything that's yellow is unstable surface of the brain unstable. Okay. So you can see here, there's a lot of instability on both sides of the brain and the frontal areas. This is a side view here is here's the back of her head. And here, you can see other areas that are unstable. And here on the bottom panel on the left, you could see another view. And you could see that there is this instability. These are areas of the brain that are firing too easily, meaning the brain is lacking stability and lacking energy. Right, probably lacking energy. So the thing and the last one I'll explain to you here are these yellow lines and blue lines, the yellow lines are showing information flow from different Broadman areas, different areas on the surface of the brain from one to the other. Okay, so there's a lot of information. This is a small slice of what we look at. Here, we're looking at six hertz, meaning this is a neuronal population, that's actually working and firing six times per second. And here's the amazing thing. This red crosshair here, is at her hippocampus, in each place. It's the area of maximal abnormality in her brain at this frequency at six hertz, you can see on the bottom here, 2.74, she is 2.74 standard deviations from the normal. Now this is after functional medicine. Okay, that's kind of shocking. If you ask me. I was pretty shocked. So then we did the highlight. And basically, we did the hyperbaric oxygen, we did the laser. We did the laser. And the first treatment. I was not expecting this, but the first treatment or facial blindness went away. I wasn't even the facial blindness, frankly, wasn't even on my map. I never saw a patient with facial blindness. I didn't know what facial blindness was. She introduced me to it. It was remember I'm a psychiatrist, right? So facial blind is not not my thing, right? She came in the next day and said, The her facial blindness was gone. I was I came home that night. And I told my wife that my mind was blown. I don't I don't get this. I don't I couldn't understand I could not get it. So after 30 treatments, he has her brain. And you can see it's completely normal. And her hippocampus now is one point to five at the maximum 1.25 but on average is 4.45 standard deviations from she's normal is normal. There's a little bit of stuff going on here that you see these yellow areas, but she's basically normal. Okay, so this is astounding. Now. She remember she had a mild cognitive impairment she had also I didn't tell you a bo E for the genes for you know, Alzheimer's disease. She had two copies, so she's homozygous and you know, there was some relatives who had and so she had a process going on in her brain, you know, because of a bowie for that was pushing her towards dementia and and we pushed it back. Okay. She did 30 treatments and then we said okay, let's stop. Then we repeated repeated the cue EEG a month later. And it actually improved even further. So the brain was still using the energy and whatever was and our brain continued to improve. Then we checked her QE G three months After we stopped and she regressed. And she regressed because the underlying processes underlying pathophysiology was taking over again, now that we were not working on a brain, so she needs continuous treatment to maintain her brain health. That's what we learned from her. show you, this is the article we published. So, this is a slide so so you can get you can just let me just come through here. Okay, so this is another one. Now this is a vascular dementia. Okay. This is the server oops, this is the surface of his brain, okay. This is after functional medicine. This panel on the left is after functional medicine, but before the hyperbaric and laser. And what you see here is areas, these dark blue lines are worse than the light blue lines. But these are areas that are not connecting with each other in a meaningful way. They're not able to share information, we can blow this thing up here, you know, the red semi circles here, tell us about each Broadman area, and how it's connecting from one side to the other. So this is where he was before his hyperbaric and laser. And then this is after his hyperbaric oxygen and laser treatment. And you can see it's a dramatic improvement in his connectivity. This is this connectivity is pretty disturbed. And then here, we looked at a specific network in his brain. So this guy was complaining everything bothered him. Everything was like something important to him. And that's the salience network, salience what's what's important to you? What's salient, right, so the salience network for him was actually abnormal. And you can see that here. This is specifically the salience network, not connecting different parts not connecting to the others, right. And you could see some poor connection here on both the right and the left side. Up here you see the salience network. I don't know if you could see this. And you can see these white areas here, that kind of outline. Yes, yes. So that's the salience network. Okay. And you can see here the salience network as well, right. So this is what happened after the hyperbaric oxygen in the laser Museum is basically a salience network is normalized, is essentially normal here. And he reported to me that things weren't bothering him so much anymore. You know, that's means things weren't so salient. Right? So this guy had a vascular dementia, a lot of cardiovascular disease. And he was having multiple problems. And he was an executive. So one day I called him, I texted him, actually, I texted him and I just checking in on him. I said, you know, John, how are you doing? He says, I'm doing great. He texts me back. He says, My memory is my new superpower. So, so I thought, well, I'd allow John's having a good day, you know, that's all. But then I thought, well, let me do some testing, objective testing, you know, and see how he's doing. So we did a CNS vital signs, and we had one in May of 219 2019. And then that was May of 2020. A year later, okay. And so you could see here, just to go over this, the verbal memory when he started, was a 66 percentile. Now, this guy was a very bright guy. And he was in the 66, presented after the treatment is in the 95th percentile. So he wasn't really kidding.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
You know, nice, great results. So amazing.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
This is mild cognitive impairment. We have other cases, where I'm going to show you one more case, if you don't know if you want to,
Dr. Andrew Wong:
probably Yeah, yeah, we can. Yeah, sure.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
So this is a 40 year old guy, oops, with a 28 year history of unremitting depression. And this is his baseline QE G. Up here. Right, and after functional medicine, now, the thing to look at here, I think, is you see my arrow here, anything over two is abnormal, okay. So so this is where he came in. So he had abnormalities here in Delta. These are the neuron populations that are operating one to four times per second. And then he had issues here in low beta which are the, the neurons that are say 11 to 14 or so cycles per second and then you can see it also in high beta abnormalities are a lot of abnormalities in but he's a bright guy. This is his peak frequency here. And you can see here is pretty high. I had around 11 I was a bright guy. And then after functional medicine, you can see these frequencies are better, right? He's under two standard deviations, except in high beta. He's still abnormal. Okay. And so then basically we gave him 15 lasers, and he still had something going on here. And then we added Neurofeedback and we still have something going on here. He's getting better. And this is his cue EEG, his his neuro navigator, cue EEG and could see pretreatment baseline here. And then after functional and you can see after functional medicine, the brain is still not normal. Normal, this little horse show show here is a marker of depression. And you can see the parietal areas still a problem, etcetera. So there's still a lot of problems. And this is after 15 lasers here. And then after lasers and neurofeedback, he's better. And the thing, I don't think I have it here. No, I don't have it here. But we have mood charts that he kept consistently. And basically, he has been depression free now for about a year for the first it's
Dr. Andrew Wong:
incredible. That's incredible. I mean, just seeing and for the listeners who haven't been watching the video, go onto YouTube. But if you're listening, what what Dr. Had is saying is basically that depression, mild cognitive impairment, vascular issues can all be, you know, the brain can basically essentially be healed and restored, like went on with that matrix of functional medicine, as well. But, um, as an underlying, you know, kind of homework in the beginning, but it sounds like for some people, this is where you even start is with hyaline
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, I'm now like I said, I used to think, well, we got to get the functional medicine in first, you know, I think it's always better, right? Because it's like a plant, right to give it good nutrients, good soil, right water to grow, the brain is going to do better with getting rid of the toxins, putting the trophic factors. It's better, but but people still can respond even up front. Right. So I don't know the limits of that yet. But you know, they can.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
How many years? Have you started doing Thailand? When did you start developing it?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
So I started about probably, I'd say 2017.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Okay, okay. I just have a couple of just detailed questionnaires. Some of the listeners might be asking this, but on the oxygen, H botter, hyperbaric oxygen therapy? Are you recommending a soft chamber hard chamber? Like what it sounds like? There's different options really, for people, but doesn't matter really how much atmospheric pressure you do on that?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I think it depends on the conditions, but we have a soft chamber. And you know, some people do heart chambers. And you know, the learning that I did with Paul harsh and others, seem to indicate that for most cases in my realm, and the kind of people I'm treating that the soft chamber is adequate. But there may be situations where you need the higher, you know, higher pressure, but the pressure is seems to be the main active ingredient. However, there's a guy named Jeff Roddy, I don't know if you've heard of him. So he's doing Yeah, in Israel, he's doing protocols in Israel, he's been studying hyperbaric oxygen now for more than 20 years. He uses a protocol that we've just recently started using where we, we put people in the chamber for 90 minutes. And we have them do 100 As close to 100% option as we can, for 20 minutes, then five minutes off, and then 20 minutes on five minutes. But we repeat that cycle a couple of times, three times total. And during that we have them do neural training. And the idea is that you can actually increase stem cells, the brain kind of thinks it has a relative hypoxia, even though it's hype for versus hyperoxic, right? And you take away the oxygen, and really, there's plenty of oxygen. And the brain says Oh, relative hypoxia takes several weeks. And then the brain says this is bad, let's make new neurons and then call it makes some stem cells, etc. So so that's what we've been doing now.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
That's really cool. It's kind of like it's kind of like a homeostasis or you know, something where the body is trying to get back to that.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, the body's making putting putting in its adaptive mechanisms. So that it can can really step up to the plate and you get you get benefit from it. You know?
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Well, I mean, this is such a important discovery or innovation, I feel like this is the next level of functional medicine and neurology, psychiatry, it's all combined. You know, I mean, certainly in our practice, we have, you know, we see a lot of people with, you know, mental health conditions, but it's all linked to the physical and getting into neurology now. And I agree that sometimes you we treat the gut hormones, immune system structural, that sometimes it's hard to touch the brain. So I love the fact that you created this, like laser therapy, and then it combined with, you know, oxygen and your exercise, because sometimes the brain is the the most important area to treat. Often it is I would say, No,
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I think so I'm going to show you one other thing, and I'll share my screen again. There's really, no, it's not this patient, but I'm going to use this as an exam as a visual. Okay? So if you see this panel here on the right here, right, so there's a pathway here that starts in the frontal area. It's it's, it's the inferior frontal orbital, occipital, the frontal occipital track that goes back from the front to the occiput, right. And it controls vision. And which makes sense, right, and it also controls reading speed. And then there's a vertical occipital pathway, which is in the back here. And I had two patients where I treated those pathways. One was a guy who was he was paranoid. And he had visual distortions, where he thought everyone was looking at him in a, with a disdain his whole life. So imagine you go through life, and everybody's looking at you with a scalpel. You know, you know, it's not hard to get a lot of great way to live. Yeah, I had a great way I did not want to get socially phobic, right, etcetera. So we did his QE G, and, you know, boom, his whole brain was normal, except for this inferior frontal occipital tract and the vertical occipital track, both involved with visual facial processing. Oops. So, so we treated it like, I think, doesn't want to say anyway, we treated it with four treatments, and his visual distortions melted away. It's, it's incredible. And then we just created another one, and his reading speed improved, which I didn't even know that the reading speed was involved in those pathways. And he told me, he said, you know, my reading speed is improved. So I did a little research and lo and behold, reading speed his mouth, so that was a kind of check. Because, you know, you always wonder how much is placebo, you know, you obviously want to be sure that what you're doing is helpful and working, etc. So it's, it's quite, it's quite mind boggling this this this technology,
Dr. Andrew Wong:
and I love these QE G's. And then just to think about how you know cholesterol, blood sugar, things like that we can check them bloodwork. This is almost like a lab test Merck for the brain, you know, brain health, and then you want to do something about it to be able to focus, you know, that area, you know, in functional medicine, we always talk about tests on gas. I mean, it's kind of like what this is. That's exactly what psychiatry Yeah,
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
that's exactly what it is. And it's superior to SPECT scans. Because spec, this is so much more detailed. And we can do this in a person's home. We can ship we do it all over the country, we can ship the equipment to people in their home, that's great. It takes an hour, maybe an hour and 20 minutes, and they ship the equipment back to us.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
So the answer needs to be done in person. What about laser? How does that work? Does that two people come to the office for that or
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
show the laser people come to the office for the treatment? And then there are some people like the first case I showed you where people actually buy their own laser, and I direct them on how to use it and check them periodically make sure they're they're doing it properly. You know, the the thing with the laser just so people understand, obviously, you know, this, there's a good amount of research now on this, but it's still considered experimental. Right. So according to the World, world health organization, we you're allowed to use something like this. It's someone with his actually, you know, you have neurodegenerative disorder, there's no treatment, right? You have aphasia, there's no treatment, you know, so there is no treatment. And so you're allowed to try something experimental. And we did, and then you have to publish, which we did. And then you want to do a trial of which we're trying to set up so that that's kind of the way to go. So it's not something you're going to treat, you know, an 11 year Your old with ADD, you're not going to do that. Right?
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Not because there's standard therapies, there's effect there's already established,
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
yes, you would have wanted. For we do this, we always need an MRI, make sure there are no conditions inside the brain, etc, that would, would be dangerous, etc. So this is limited to people in certain conditions like cognitive decline or treatment resistant depression or things like that, you know,
Dr. Andrew Wong:
they've already done CBT they've already tried, ideally, trauma informed therapy and things,
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
both of those things. Right, exactly. And then
Dr. Andrew Wong:
I was going to ask you, how do you decide when to weave those Hylian treatments together with things like EMDR? And therapy?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, so I mean, the patients, I would say that if someone has a history of trauma, you know, emotional, physical trauma, sexual trauma, etc, if they haven't dealt with it, and it's affecting their ability to care for themselves in a proper way, they always have to deal with that first, before engaging in our treatment. Yes, treatments are complex. And if you don't have a partner, on the other side, you know, you as a physician, health care practitioners limit to what you can do so. So we always get them involved in that kind of thing. EMDR you know, I actually, I forget her name, the woman who developed it. Remember Her Name? Anyway, I interviewed her probably 15 years ago on my radio show. And I was talking about EMDR with my, my wife and daughter, actually, last night, I'm just I don't know how effective it is. I just haven't seen much, but there may be practitioners out there who are great with it. I don't intend to, like knock it or anything, because it may be great for some people and and maybe great practitioners, but just haven't seen that much benefit from EMDR. Myself, you know. So
Dr. Andrew Wong:
yeah, I think I think it does depend on each person to I think we should touch on medication, since you have background and obviously psychiatry, psychopharmacology, where are you these days with using medications are using them much in your practice anymore? Or how's that going?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, I'm using much less than I used to in the mid up until the mid to late 90s, I was using a lot of medication I was, that's what I did. I did the whole medication, psychopharmacology. polypharmacy thing, you know, then when I got into the functional medicine, and I wrote my second book, we ended up getting I was a best seller. So we had had so much I couldn't even treat all the people that were coming. So we, we just selected people who would do what I asked them to do. And after a few years, that's when I had my big aha, after about three years or so I was like, what what's going on here, I'm barely prescribing meds, and, and everyone's getting better, and their osteoporosis is better. And then type two diabetes is gone. You know, and even a woman whose ms lesion disappeared, I'm like, What's going on here? I thought, you know, I must be lying to myself. So I hired a statistician to go over all my data. And these were, we had, I think, 23, treatment resistant depression patients. And at the, the data didn't show actually that all 23 were normalized by 10 months. In fact, and without any changes in meds, I didn't take them off their meds. I just didn't make any changes, except I added lithium for one patient who was suicidal and lithium is helps reduce the risk of suicide. So I think meds are a good tool, but they're widely overused. And I wouldn't want to be without them. But, but I think they're widely overused.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Yeah. And then just a take home for the listeners. Thank you so much, Bob, for being on here today. What is one thing you wish everyone knew whether it's themselves or their loved ones about treating psychiatric disorders?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I think the main thing people should know is that most psychiatric disorders are caused by physiological problems. Right? That's one piece. The second piece is we have massive increase in psychiatric disorders because of the physiology because of the hormone interrupting chemicals. And also because of the breakdown in our society. And we give cannot separate the loss of community that's rampant. It's, it's so powerful, to to not be in a herd think of it. We're herd animals. You're out in the plains, Savanna wandering alone on your own, you know, you're going to be much more stressed and much more vulnerable. So we don't have communities that's a big factor in increasing mental health. So When you're looking at your kid and say, Wow, what's wrong with him or her or your spouse, whatever, understand there are real reasons that things that they don't know about that you don't know about things that are not in their control. Yes, it's their responsibility. Yes. But it's really just the tip of the iceberg. The psychology, just the tip of the iceberg.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
This we're dealing with non functional medicine. There's almost like individual health, but then there's like this social emotional community matrix.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
Yeah, exactly. That's yeah, right. Exactly. Right.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Well, speaking of that, for the, for the larger community, thank you so much, Dr. Day. Thank you so much, Bob, for being here. Today. We do have one fun closing question for all of our guests here. It is a pretty interesting one, I think, what is one thing under $20 that you think has changed your health for the better, better that you'd like to share?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
I would say, this is very personal. Okay. But for me, it's the belief that there is a Creator, and that the Creator has a plan, and that everything is part of a plan. And everything has meaning and purpose. If you can grasp that, and what it takes, admittedly, it's a challenge, but I've been working on it now for at least 15 years, maybe longer. If you can grasp that, then your stress, the stress that you experience in life is reduced by 80%. Then you may have pain, but you won't have suffering.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
That's a great point and great points and definitely a doesn't really cost anything I guess it cost you no more of a tension and intentionality and working on like you said, but that's that's amazing. Have that meaning and purpose, believing in a higher power? Great answer. It's probably the best answer I've ever heard so far. Great. Thank you so much, Bob, again, the doctor today, how can listeners learn more about you and work with you?
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
So we have a website. It's called Whole psychiatry. It's like who li like Whole Foods, like Whole Foods. Okay. All right. It's like whole psychiatry. And there's a lot of information on the website, tons of inflammation information on the website. And if they want to contact us we do couple of things I can I can be your physician, if that's what you want. Or we can actually do an educational consults so that I can do a workup is whatever and then help you to work with your physician and try and be flexible with that. But the the work we do is very, very, very thorough. I spent about four hours to five hours with every new patient, and myself, and and then hours making their plan, et cetera, et cetera. It's very, very detailed. So it's really not necessarily for everybody. It's for people who really are ready to dig deep need to dig, dig deep and motivated and able to do something like that. I love that.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
It's so great. Sounds like amazing grand rounds with the with the patient for four to five hours. Yeah. And you're right here in the DMV, your local. So for those of you listening down in the Washington, DC area Dr. He has practice is in Chevy Chase. Correct. In rockville, Colorado. Okay, I should we weren't we That's why That's why I thought you were there. So yeah, rockville is great to have to come by sometime. And yeah, thanks so much again, Bob. And great to Great to see you here and hope to connect to you again soon.
Dr. Robert Hedaya:
It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity.
Dr. Andrew Wong:
Thank you for taking the time to listen to us today. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review. It helps our podcasts to reach more listeners. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our next episodes and conversations. And thank you so much again for being with us.