The biggest thing that started impacting me was just cognitive functioning. And it was
the start of, for me what's been decades of having chronic fatigue. And so it was directly
impacting my line of work. At that point, I was a senior executive in a fortune 50 company.
And I remember going to my primary care physician. And at that point in time, they I think they
did an EEG, which showed nothing, a CT, which showed nothing, which is very common from
what I found out that they don't show up on those tests. And so he sent me to go see a
psychiatrist who then hearing the symptoms, put me on the psychological cocktail, which
I think so many people follow the same path. And I think that's where oftentimes you get
into even more trouble because they're trying to treat the symptoms instead of the underlying
cause of what's going on. So is that something that's common that you've seen, not only with
other veterans, but automatic brain injury patients,
I'm an outsider, I mean, I gave you my background, I trained in infectious disease and public
health and prevention, did not train in neurology or neurosurgery, which, or sports medicine,
which makes me very much an outsider. So it's hard for me to sort of get into those clicks,
if you will, but because I'm an outsider, I looked at this problem, not with the lens
of my training. So cardiologist is looking at the heart, and I know worth orthopods looking
at the bones, and you know, and so on, and so on. I kind of looked at it more, much more
holistic approach, because I wasn't hindered by my background, and by my training, it was
all new to me. I mean, I had to relearn the biochemistry, I had to relearn what I knew
about the brain. And I, I mean, I literally had to seek out people to teach me on these
things. And so not everybody has that luxury, certainly not in the civilians. I we, you
know, if you're not seeing patients, you're not making money in the military, at least
had that option. I still had a salary. And I was in an I was a professor at the Uniformed
Services University. So I had that flexibility outside of teaching my courses, I had that
flexibility to develop the research and develop that intellectual knowledge. But doctors don't
think that way. neurologists aren't thinking that way. neurologists are looking at pituitary
that's the endocrinologist world. Well, the endocrinologist only looking at diabetes.
You know, and they're like, well, that's the brain. That's the neurologists, you know,
so nobody's nobody's taking ownership. There's no concussion doctor, there's no TBI specialty
because it crosses over these different specialties. And so it kind of gets lost in that stovepipe,
that silo of our specialization in medicine. nobody's really looking at the bigger picture,
that functional medicine or integrative medicine approach.
If there is a topic you would like me to cover or a guest that you would like us to showcase
on this podcast, please DM me at John R Miles on Instagram. And if you haven't gone there
before, please check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is also john r
miles. And lastly, we have some amazing episodes coming up in the future. I will be interviewing
astronaut Kayla Barron who's getting ready to go up on the ISS in October. I'm also going
to interview former astronaut Captain Wendy Lawrence, a distinguished graduate of the
US Naval Academy and I'm going to do those two episodes in tandem so we can talk to an
astronaut who is part of the shuttle program who knows Kayla and Kayla's journey as well.
I also have NASCAR driver Jesse Iwuji who has won two diversity awards and is now racing
in NASCAR XFINITY I have on Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine and former SEAL and Dr. Bob Adams
such great content coming your way. thank you as always for listening and supporting
the podcast.