Transforming Depression Through Bioelectric Medicine With Guy Odishaw

In this conversation, Guy delves into the pressing issue of depression, particularly its prevalence among women over 40. He explores the role of bioelectric medicine in addressing depression, emphasizing the importance of understanding the body's intelligence and the dysregulation that often leads to mental health challenges. Through a case study, Guy illustrates how innovative treatments can lead to significant transformations in individuals suffering from chronic depression. Guy discusses the transformative journeys of clients through neurofeedback and integrative medicine. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole person and finding the right practitioner to unlock individual health challenges. The discussion highlights the complexity of the human system and the need for a holistic approach to health, moving beyond simple solutions to address root causes.

00:00 Introduction and New Year Reflections
01:54 Understanding Depression and Its Impact
06:01 Bioelectric Medicine: A New Perspective
12:11 Dysregulation and Its Role in Depression
18:10 Case Study: Chronic Depression and Brain Injury
24:03 Transformative Approaches in Treatment
32:13 Transformative Journeys: A Client's Experience
39:10 The Key to Unlocking Health: Finding the Right Practitioner
47:44 Integrative Medicine: Understanding the Whole Person
54:17 Complexity of the Human System: Beyond Simple Solutions

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Transcript

Elizabeth Latocha (00:01)
Welcome back, guy. Happy New Year. How are you?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:04)
Happy New Year. I'm doing great 2025 is off to a of a tear and I wouldn't mind if it slowed down a little bit But I have a feeling that's not gonna happen

Elizabeth Latocha (00:15)
Nope, it is not. And it's interesting that you say that because generally January tends to be the longest month, but I cannot believe as we are recording this, is January 25th, it literally I'm like, where has the time gone? So yes, it's probably going to blow by fast. So we got to step back and just, you know, enjoy each and every moment of these days. So we don't lose it.

Food for thought. Well, this is your third time on the show. This is amazing. We just got so much to talk about.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:44)
Yeah.

is. I mean, it's

been wonderful to have this ongoing conversation with you that's evolving over time. I really appreciate you making space for that.

Elizabeth Latocha (01:02)
Yeah, well, you know, and again, you have what you do is just there's so much involved that I couldn't do. We couldn't do it in one or two. Right. And for those who are just not listening, I have referenced it in the intro, the other two episodes. So please do go to the show notes, click on the other two and listen to a guy and what you know, everything that he does and what you know, what

we're

going to be kind of going right into today. And speaking of which, so the last thing I want to talk about in terms of the bioelectric medicine that you do at Cerebral Fit is depression. Now depression in general hits

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:35)
Mm.

Elizabeth Latocha (01:54)
every gender, age, whatever you can think of, right? So depression is running rampant and I say gender specific just because there's a lot of males who also, I've heard a lot of adult males committing suicide because of depression, right? So it's not to leave that out because that is definitely something that's very important to touch on.

But for my audience, typically women over 40 going through the perimenopause, the hormonal changes and the menopause and the postmenopause, Depression is rampant is that because estrogen when it's low, it causes depression. And so I wanna hear from you for the entire episode that we're doing here of how bioelectric medicine

and it helps or alleviates or whatever it is with conditions such as depression.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (03:01)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great topic because as you said, it affects so many people. And I would say kind of as a whole in healthcare, regardless of what side a person is on, whether on kind of just conventional allopathic medicine or holistic medicine and whatever is happening on that side. everybody is challenged by depression.

in terms of being able to really resolve the condition. I'm going to say efficiently, right? Because an efficiency being kind of time, money, number of treatments, all of those things kind of backed into the equation. So being able to treat depression or resolve depression was really, you know, I always like to talk about what is the resolution of the condition versus the management of condition? Because those are two very different endpoints.

So really talking about resolving depression, we're all kind of stuck with how to do that in an efficient way. So yeah, great topic.

Elizabeth Latocha (04:12)
Yeah, yeah. So let's I'm just gonna leave it up to you. I mean, this is it's an open ended conversation here because you know, I, I don't I don't know a lot as I mean, session or third episode in I know a bit about bioelectric medicine, but I want to understand cerebral fit and how you touch on and how you know, the bioelectric medicine can alleviate this.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (04:15)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess maybe I'll start from kind of a meta level. So just view from, you know, 10,000 feet of just a perspective. So it's an emerging perspective. And I would say like in the area of bioelectric medicine, we see it in its probably most developed form in the new framed in the new language of Western medicine and Western science, where

we're looking at the human body, not just the brain, but the whole organism on all levels of thinking from kind of a computation level. So that's the language sounds reductionist and that we're turning the like the brain into a computer, the body into a machine, but it's not that at all. It really is a much fuller perspective, but the language sounds like that. And there's some

value in that because I think it connects it to some things that are practical real world that we understand their concepts, but the the perspective of bioelectric medicine is that there's an intelligence in the system and It's that intelligence that we want to address and not the parts So earlier before we came on we were talking a little bit about hormones right and so so absolutely hormones are important in depression and will

Elizabeth Latocha (06:01)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (06:06)
get into that a little bit more. But just taking that from a information standpoint, it's still the intelligence in the system that is organizing and orchestrating the endocrine system. And so conventional medicine wants to move the parts around. They're like,

this person is low on estrogen or you're high on estrogen and you're low on testosterone or whatever. As we look at those levels and we want to say, we'll put more pieces in. Like you could open up the trunk of your car and just pour in some bolts and then your car would run better. No, but we do that to the body. We just open up our mouth and we pour in some hormones or some supplements or some other pharmaceutical or whatever it is. And we just think,

Well, there it'll run better, right? We were low on that. Now we're high on it. Like you're low on oil. Now you have more oil. You're great. And, and the perspective of bioelectric medicine is really about the intelligence in the system and, how is the intelligence not doing its job. And the core understanding is even if the, system is, is being challenged by say, you know, diminished

constituents like estrogen or progesterone or again, calcium, magnesium, you name it. Like what's the part that we're conceiving as not there lacking too much of not doing what it's supposed to, but we're pointing at it saying that's the problem. The idea is this idea of working with the intelligence is that the system when it's optimized is a problem solving

agent. And so even if some of our constituent parts are not optimal levels, the intelligence figures out how to have optimal health, given its set of tools in the moment to keep the machine running. How does the intelligence and the system solve the problem of, I don't have enough of this? so

So this is the growing understanding that's coming out of the area of bioelectric medicine. And not all of it is strictly bioelectric medicine. It's just, there's more of a mindset in that field of biology about exploring this idea of intelligence in the living organism at every level. So intelligence within the cell, intelligence of the cell, intelligence between cells, intelligence of your liver, being different than the intelligence of your spleen.

And then your whole visceral system has an intelligence and all the way up, right? That there's these layers of intelligences. And this starts to sound like, if you listen to somebody in bioelectric medicine space talk, it starts to sound like something like Chinese medicine, where they have a liver meridian. And it's not necessarily about the physical organ. It's about the intelligence in the system.

that they've given this name to it, like your liver intelligence and your spleen intelligence and your pericardium intelligence. And up until relatively recently in the West, we thought all of that was just imagination and delusion and wishful thinking and all of that, right? Just kind of coded language for some type of science that was really like our science, but translation and fantasy got in the way. But now the science coming out of

bioelectric medicine is saying, no, no, no, they were actually onto something. And we can start to have a similar paradigm and concept. So all of that is setting a context for much of what I'm going to say, where some things might sound, some things I might say might sound like, can you say that? Like that goes against everything we understand about depression. And it's

More because a lot of what I have to say is about this level of intelligence and not what our conventional allopathic approach tells us that say depression is you know, it's not enough serotonin or know enough oxytocin or something like that and say it's about these chemical bits and if we just had the bits right again like like open up

your hood and pour in some bolts and then your car is fine. Same thing. Let's just pour in some serotonin and then we'll be fine. Right. And in this approach is saying no, that that's not the case. So so a way to that I we generally think about depression is, you know, in a certain way. And again, there's just so it's getting specific is the challenge. Right. And you're always leaving something out and there's multiple pathways into this. But

Generally, we think of it as depression is kind long-term anxiety. Anxiety is the feeling of your system being dysregulated. So there's some dysregulation. And again, our minds will automatically go to some finite cause. So this is the cause of it.

Not to exclude that, like that does happen. Sometimes it is as simple as a single cause, but most of the time it's not. Most of the time it's multivariant and it is bigger than a single cause, which is why a single intervention generally doesn't work, right? Occasionally, but not generally across a population, a single intervention does not work. So if we start with this kind of very kind of loose

you know, very broad generalization, but it maps out well on an actual patient population, which is there's dysregulation in our system. And so that could be, you know, a problem with digestion. It could be a problem with the hormone system. It could be, you know, something in the brain. Maybe it is a psychosocial. So maybe it's trauma. Maybe it's family systems. There's just so many places. Environmental toxins.

There's just so many ways our system can be dysregulated. When we're dysregulated past that point of our system's natural intelligence being able to manage the system effectively, the feeling is anxiety. That's the experience. So just like if you let your blood sugar get too low, you'll feel hunger. If you don't respond to the signal of hunger, which means I need calories, then you'll start to have other symptoms.

kind of lightheaded, dizzy, faint, brain fog, all kinds of things, all signs of low blood sugar. In that case, don't treat your brain fog, eat something, and then you will replenish your blood sugar and you won't feel hungry and you won't have all of these other signals in your system. So we say hunger at some point becomes a dysregulation that has

a somatic experience, a subjective experience, we call that hunger. Just think the same way about anxiety. Anxiety is just a communication that says something's wrong. And then the goal is that we should look and see what's dysregulated, how do I regulate that? And then my system will stop sending the signal of anxiety. But we don't do that. So we have anxiety. So.

tends to be an over-activated system. we tend to be kind of sympathetic nervous system is over-activated. And that goes on long enough that another part of our system will come in and say, like, we can't survive like this. We can't survive with all of our systems kind of running on high alert. We have to start turning these down. So then this other system that is an intelligence that is trying to save the whole organism.

starts to down-regulate multiple systems in the body, and then that is what we call depression. So chronic anxiety leads to depression. As a general rule, always going to be edge cases that don't fit into that, but as a model, it's an effective clinical model. again, it's very much what we see in the arc of treating depression, then.

How do we start to bring those systems back online and rarely is it one system? right again, depending on how long a person has had it and you know, I was just working with this is probably a 14 year old boy who who you know was diagnosed with chronic depression and you think how like at 14 Like how did you get all the way to depression? Right, but again, it's just a risk. It's an intelligent

response of an organism that recognizes the pattern that it's been in is not a sustainable pattern. And so it's an act of intelligence to lead the system into this thing we call depression. So again, to your point of it cutting across ages and genders, absolutely true. Like we have our stereotype of who fits in that category, but the reality is no.

So in the treating of it is then in many ways it is about revitalizing and re-regulating multiple systems in the body.

Typically what will happen is that person will kind of move backwards then, like come out of their depression and go back into their anxiety. So now you've got to work with the anxiety or the dysregulation that was there and then moving them back to a regulated state where they're just kind of in an optimal function and these things that they would call depression or anxiety are no longer.

know, subjective experiences or objective measurements in their system that they're just functioning normally and they're no longer managing a condition. They're not managing their depression or managing their anxiety. They just don't have it. And I mean, that's kind of an ideal goal, but it is absolutely utterly possible for people to arrive there. It's just like that's a

It's a goal end state where we would, as people, we'd all like to get, and as clinicians, we'd like to get all of our patients to that place. But of course, what we get is a spectrum for all kinds of reasons. So I'm maybe just going to pause there and just see if there's any questions percolating on your side.

Elizabeth Latocha (17:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was just thinking how long is typically I understand or you know the the kind of backtracking right so person it does it's not just I'm depressed you have to go through

this dysregulation, this anxiety, and then get to depression and then depression, okay we're going back to the anxiety, and then like you said, but how typically how long does that take until you know, like you said, it's probably based on individuals, but if you can give an average of how long it usually takes to kind of get close to where where you want.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (18:10)
Sure. Yeah. I think all of the time piece, I don't know how to separate that from finding the right corrective measures. So I'll give you an example. So somebody came to our clinic for a

chronic depression. So 30 plus years chronic depression had really, you know, one of those people who kind of tried everything. And, you know, of course that's an overstatement, but years, know, decades of therapy, different kinds of therapy, multiple therapy types of therapy at the same time, diet, exercise, you know, cocktails of pharmaceuticals. mean, she really intelligently did everything she could.

Elizabeth Latocha (18:45)
Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (19:06)
to resolve her depression. And it's not that those things didn't help, but when she came to us, she was still chronically depressed and had a minimal quality of life, a very constrained quality of life. So it was still true, even though we could go back and say all kinds of positive things about how this mental health provider helped her and how this psychiatrist with this medication combination helped.

Elizabeth Latocha (19:21)
Bye.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (19:33)
And so it isn't that those things weren't helpful. It's just 30 plus years later, she was still managing chronic depression with a low quality of life. So that's where we find her. So, you know, she's heard about neurofeedback and thinks maybe this is the answer, you know, nothing else has helped. this help? She comes in, we talk with her and, you like, you know, yeah, like we do believe that working with the brain in these cases can bring a resolution for a number of people.

So we did what we did. So we do neuroimaging and neurofeedback, neuroSTIM, and we're kind of taking her through our program. And I don't know, maybe we're 15, 20 sessions in, and she's reporting some change, but they're just minimal, kind of around the edges. Clinically, we have a sense that we'd like to be seeing more robust change at this point in the treatment plan, and we're not.

as a team that takes us back into her case and like, what did we miss? You know, what, yeah, what did we miss? So one of the things that came out of her, her neuroimaging was an indication that there had been a brain injury. So, okay. great. I know that we had touched on it, but her narrative was no brain injury, no concussion, nothing. So this time

Elizabeth Latocha (20:47)
Mm.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (20:58)
We really talked to her and just asked it over and over and over and over over again. And finally what emerged was a story of when she was 13, she was ice skating, she fell and hit her head and cracked her skull and there was bleeding and hospital and all of that, but no concussion, right? Because she was never told you have a concussion. So she does not have a narrative of I had a concussion. And so we were like, yeah, we think that qualifies. Like we don't know, but we're pretty sure that story.

Elizabeth Latocha (21:16)
Right.

Well, especially when they're that young, could be soft still, it could be melt, you know, it's still growing and it's, yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (21:30)
Oh, yeah, yeah. And we know

now that you don't need anywhere near that amount of force to have a concussion. Right? So we'll never know for sure. But the fact that that happened and her neuroimaging had like a 99.9 % confidence of a pattern of EEG that matches with known brain injuries.

Elizabeth Latocha (21:39)
Right. Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (22:01)
So what that did for us was like, okay, great. So we're gonna treat you not as a chronic depression, but we're gonna treat you as a brain injury. And all that does is kind of changes the clinical aspects of what we do. What neurofeedback trainings do we do? What supplementary treatments do we do? One of the things that we do when we know somebody has a traumatic brain injury is we...

do a deep dive into their autonomic nervous system because brain injuries often affect the autonomic nervous system. So we did that. Well, we found out her autonomic nervous system was a mess. It was what we call anti-correlated. just to say a little bit, when you inhale, your heart rate should go up. And when you exhale, your heart rate should go down. We're wired that way. It's a sympathetic and then a parasympathetic.

response. Hers was the other way around. So when she inhaled, her heart slowed down. And when she exhaled, her heart sped up. So she was anti-correlated. Her system was kind of running backwards. And this is just one... Like this is a perspective into the autonomic nervous system.

Elizabeth Latocha (23:15)
And is that

common? Like, I shouldn't say common, but is the correlation common? Like is there any other way that somebody, I guess what I'm getting at is how did that happen? Like is it just the central or whatever, the nervous system? Yeah, yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (23:34)
Autonomous. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah. So it's a it's a dysregulation in the autonomic nervous system. You know, and we're we're making a kind of a naive assumption that this was from the brain injury. But we don't know that as a fact. Again, this is this is 40 years in history for her. At that point, we'll never know. And again, it doesn't matter. Right. Like if those are facts that we could prove.

Elizabeth Latocha (23:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (24:04)
What it, what it did for us was, was open up our thinking from taking, you know, the, kind of conventional diagnosis of this as chronic depression. And of course we did all of our testing, but our minds were just in a chronic depression mindset. So that's, that's what, how we were approaching it. When we thought TBI that put our mind into a TBI, which said

we have to look at autonomics. We looked at autonomics and we went, whoa, this is terrible. Now, another piece that had kind of prevented us earlier in the process from doing that with this particular person was she has wearables. So she's got the aura ring and the smart watch and just said, look, my HRV is great.

You know, and, and, you know, we looked at the data and sure enough, the, know, and I have all of my caveats around wearables and their, their, their efficacy for at a clinic level, right. But they are good at tracking. Like a person across time. So trends within an individual, these devices are good for that. And so when we looked at years of her HRV data, it was really good. And, and so that.

Elizabeth Latocha (25:11)
Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (25:29)
That was easy to just say, OK, there's really no there there. We're not looking at autonomics. But what we found out was her HRV was really good because her heart was relatively unpaced. It was just kind of randomly getting fast and slow and fast and slow, but it was not being paced. The intelligence that is to drive that system was not driving that system. Something else was.

So her heart rate was chaotic, but more importantly, the beat to beat time, the heart rate variability was chaotic. And this has all kinds of ramifications. mean, there's some actually some really good research that is just kind of coming out now to show that the beat to beat interval, so heart rate variability, has a direct pathway to the brain.

that informs regions of the brain in a number of ways, but this particular research was actually looking at our perception of time and literally our perception that our perception opens and closes with our heart rate variability. So when our heart is in a contraction, our perception narrows. And when our heart rate is in a relaxation, so between our perception opens. So

able to measure through perceptual testing with individuals that the contraction of our heart has a direct impact on our perception and just whether we're open or closed. So again, this is a ripple effect through the brain because we understand the brain is highly networked and a little change in one area is very quickly amplified across multiple areas. So it'll take them forever to really

take this finding and find all of the ways that it impacts the brain. But in this case, it just to say, we have all of these nested systems. And so something like a brain injury that affected her autonomics that led to this change in heart rate variability, but again, not to limit it just to her heart, the same system, the same autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic parasympathetic balance is also running digestions.

You know, the digestive system, thermal regulation, liver function, kidney function, spleen function, hormone function, all of that is being managed by the autonomic nervous system. So if the autonomic nervous system is dysregulated, then all of those systems are going to be dysregulated. Right. So what we did with her was once we saw this, we switched her from neurofeedback to biofeedback. started to regulate her autonomic nervous system.

It didn't take very long for her, would say, you over a period of about six sessions, six one hour sessions in the clinic. She went from her autonomic nervous system being kind of out of control. There wasn't an intelligence pacing it. It was kind of doing its own thing to gaining control over it, to regulating it, to restoring that

natural intelligence that then began to regulate her autonomic nervous system. And literally within a few weeks, her life started to change. All of the things we wanted to hear from her, you know, coming from those 20 sessions of neurofeedback, we started to hear from her in the in days and weeks following this change in her autonomic nervous system. And that was things like her noticing, it's like at work.

she found that she just had more patience with her coworkers. Things that were bothersome to her and caused her to kind of close down, shut down, isolate, avoid, weren't bothersome to her anymore. Kind of clicks or groups of her fellow employees rather than, again, her isolating, she found herself joining. And all of sudden, work wasn't this awful place that didn't feed her and took from her, was...

was not that. She didn't mind going to work and she started to develop relationships. So it was one piece. At home, she would come home at the end of the day, she would be just kind of exhausted and collapse on the couch and eat poorly and then watch TV and then sleep poorly. So just a series of bad habits. Well, then she found she would get home and she actually had an interest, like a motivation to want to cook food. So then she started cooking her meals again and she started eating better. And just the act of that

engaging. all, think most of us know that there's something really rewarding and kind of vitalizing to us when we cook our own food and eat the food that we've cooked. That has, again, affects multiple systems. can't limit that down to, just she was eating more carrots, so she was getting more, know, carrots in, and that's why, because this chemical was more in her diet.

Elizabeth Latocha (30:45)
Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (30:49)
It's the whole act, right? And just the intrinsic feeling of wanting to is for depressed people, that's one of the things that they will tell you is missing, right? There isn't that intrinsic motivation to want to do something. And even if they have that, then there isn't the kind of energy to do it, right? So we have multiple areas, of the system that aren't working in our favor. So she reported that that started to happen.

Elizabeth Latocha (30:51)
Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (31:19)
a desire to go work out, a desire to be social, where she'd been isolated, you know, really for her entire adult life. But now she started to reach out to friends and go out and start to be social. And that has its own rewards through the social engagement system, social reward system, get the dopamine going on multiple levels. It was absolutely amazing to witness her transformation.

over a relatively short period of time. I given that she'd been doing for decades, this unfolded over weeks. And I interact with her every now and again, you know, kind of out in the world. She, once her system really started to change, we empowered her with a home-based practice. So she didn't need to come to the clinic and she's able to continue that practice on her own at home. But when I do run into her out in the community, it's just delightful to see

Elizabeth Latocha (31:50)
Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (32:13)
how much her life has changed from who she'd been for 30 years to who she is now is not somebody who's managing to press in, but somebody who's living her life. And so to your, you know, the, the, the launching question here was timeline, right? So the timeline was something like six weeks, not, we weren't done, but six weeks, we knew we were on the right path. She was

Elizabeth Latocha (32:29)
Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (32:43)
noticing and reporting significant change, she was on a trajectory that we could then empower her to continue that trajectory and get that. So, you know, if things had not gone differently, we could have done a full course of neurofeedback, typically 40 sessions.

she would have probably had an experience much like she'd had with every other intervention. It helped some around the edges, but the core wouldn't have changed. I really believe that as much as I believe in neurofeedback and neuroSTEM, we weren't working where the problem was. When we were able to identify it and we were able to restore the natural intelligence in the mechanism, so we weren't micromanaging by

trying to put all these different nutrients in or all of these pharmaceutical chemicals into the system to push it around to get it to do what we think it should do. When we just restored the natural intelligence in her autonomic nervous system, it started to correct layers and layers and layers of dysregulation that led to her just, you know, in a sense, being normal. Like just a...

a well regulated, you know, physical, psychological, spiritual entity. And off into her life she went. And of course, still having all of the same stuff we all have, like, you know, get a cold, have a headache, have a day when you don't sleep well or a night you don't sleep well in a groggy day, like just normal stuff, right? Not superhuman, but not battling chronic depression as an everyday activity.

Elizabeth Latocha (34:29)
Right, yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (34:37)
Right? Like that's what's different. So, so again, to me, like this is, this is what I've seen over my, my clinical career is it's like, I have this metaphor of kind of the lock and the key and every client that comes in is a lock and they're looking for the key that unlocks their system. And they're coming to the, to, to say me, the provider saying, do you have the key to unlock my system? And maybe I do, and maybe I don't.

And then if I don't, they go to the next provider and say, the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, until if anybody, like myself included, when I have health issues, I'm doing the same thing. I'm looking around and saying, who do I think is most likely to have the key to my system? And then I go and I present myself and say, hey, could you try some of your keys to see if they unlock my system? And if I'm lucky, I've guessed well.

gotten in the room with somebody who has the key, they unlock my system, I get what I want, which is better health, and I move on.

what we haven't really done very well is figure out in our healthcare system how to identify who has what keys. And what kind of lock are you and what kind of key do you need? And then that's the person who has the best chance of finding the key. mean, unfortunately, that's still where we're at, that it is more random than...

you know, intelligently guided, you know, optimized process in terms of healthcare. So that is to say, I have no answer to you about how long.

Elizabeth Latocha (36:25)
You know, just listening to you, I retract that question. Because, I mean, that's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that story because that story is just not just one of hope. Obviously, we all hope because we're on this earth to thrive, right? So we're on this earth to be the best.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (36:29)
you

Elizabeth Latocha (36:50)
physically, emotionally, mentally that we can be. And when you go through low grade, you know, feelings like she did, even though, you said, and I want to, you know, reiterate a little bit is, is really, they weren't getting to the root cause. They weren't getting to the problem because they, and I'm speaking in general, they, didn't do the extensive work.

or the extensive questioning that you have done.

I mean, usually you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist asking that question, what's in your past or in your history. Doctors should do that as well. We need to understand our history. And yes, but it'll take a little bit. And I've actually seen it, even as a health coach, like some people don't remember or they're ashamed or they're something to bring light of

something

that could really.

flip the switch, change the course as your client did or your patient did. So yeah, I retract the question because each, and I think I even, when I said the question, I basically said each individual I'm sure is a different case. But to understand, and I'm gonna say that it took really, it took you that short time, but I think it took her.

31 years, because it was 30 and then the time that she, in that little short time with you. it's just an understanding of asking the right questions is what it is.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (38:41)
Yep,

it is. you know, there's for a few decades now, there's been this kind of concept of an integrally informed provider. So being an integrally informed provider. So this idea of integrative medicine, I I've chewed on this for 35 years. I worked at University of Minnesota and started an integrative clinic. I built one of the largest integrative clinics in the country.

I really understand, I have a good grounding in integrative medicine. One of the challenges is still that there's the sense that a practitioner can be an integrative practitioner. And as hard as I've tried for decades to disavow my practice and community, my colleagues, that nobody can be an integrative practitioner. One can only be

integrally informed. And that in a sense, like that's our duty, I think, as clinicians, is to be integrally informed about what's out there so that there's the best chance that any one clinician can say, I don't have the key to your system. I think you will find the key, you know, first choice, second choice, third choice.

And ideally, then you have a clinician in those categories that you can say, I trust this person, they'll take good care of you and like me, if they don't think they can help you, they will tell you, right? That that's what we would want. And I'll give just a couple of quick examples. So another one of our clients, he comes in, just kind of a nebulous sense of what's going on. He's mostly a peak performance.

Elizabeth Latocha (40:23)
Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (40:37)
person so that they don't peak performance people don't start off with a health complaint. They start off with, I'm perfect, but I want to be perfecter. Right? Like everything is great. I'm at the top of my career, I'm at the top of my health, I'm at the top of everything. Everything is going well for me. I want to find out if I can be better. Right? Great. That's our peak performance program. So of course everybody has some stuff going on, but just to say his reason for being in the clinic wasn't to fix a problem.

It was to be better than he was. Okay, great. Well, again, what we saw was there was a definitely a brain issue, a big one. And then autonomics again, were really bad. so presenting this to him, he's like, hold on, I'm executive, physical at Mayo and here's all everything. And he's pulling up all that.

his heart scans and his everything and everything and everything. He's like, this can't be. Mayo would have seen it. Absolutely. And I was like, know. And so what I was able to do was connect what we saw in the EEG and what we saw in the what's called a resonance frequency determination. So it's kind of like a neuroimaging for the autonomic nervous system.

When I just presented that data and then described, here's what you might be experiencing. Well, then what comes forward is this story that one of the things he's known for amongst his family and friends is his ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, right? Middle of a conversation, just fall asleep, right? Anytime there's a lull in the conversation, he falls asleep. So I'm like, you know, it's like, that's a problem, right? You know, like that's not just a cute

Elizabeth Latocha (42:20)
narcoleptic.

Ahem.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (42:31)
work. Like, that's a problem. don't, wouldn't you rather be able to stay awake when you're having a conversation with your friends, you're up at the cabin, you're sitting around having a beer, there's a lull in the conversation and you're out like a light. Like, you know, or, you know, I started to ask him like, like, you and your wife go for a, you know, a long walk and talk about your plans and you know, it was like, no, because I'll fall asleep. Right? It's like, do you sit and talk with your kids?

Elizabeth Latocha (42:32)
you

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (43:01)
because they're there and they're like, was your day? I was like, oh, because I fall asleep. Exactly. If he's not in a highly stimulating environment, like his high pressure work situation, his nervous system just has two states, 100 % on and 100 % off. So we talked about this whole idea of response flexibility. You kind of want your nervous system to be like a transmission and you're going to have multiple gears.

You have to be able to be in the gear that matches the circumstance, the environment you're in, right? So how do you down regulate to be present with people on a social level, which he can't do. He just falls asleep. So he, you know, sort of kind of acknowledges that maybe that's a thing. So again, we start the training, neurofeedback, biofeedback. And when we start off, he can't stay awake for 30 seconds, literally. just there's no stimulus.

Elizabeth Latocha (43:39)
Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (43:56)
Neurofeedback, biofeedback is boring. You're watching a screen with a little thing on it that you have to make the thing go up and down. And if you do nothing, it does nothing. So it's no stimulus, fall asleep. Well, over a period of about maybe 15 sessions, we get him to a point where he can stay awake for the entire training, right? Well, that was huge for him. That was a huge gain to be able to stay awake for 45 continuous minutes in a no stimulus situation.

Elizabeth Latocha (44:01)
Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (44:24)
So he was unsure what this was doing for him. It's like, don't get this. Again, the Mayo thing. In the meantime, he's had another executive physical. You're just peak health. He's an elite athlete, great physical condition, all of it. So long gap from treatment. And then he comes back because he started to notice like.

Elizabeth Latocha (44:29)
That's stats.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (44:51)
There were things in his life that were getting better when we were doing the training that as he fell off the training started to go away. And he was like, you know what? actually did like how I was functioning better when we were doing this training. I want to get back on it. want to resolve this. So here's one of the things that by digging into, because this was really important to him, because again, this happens with my peak performance people. There's no stone that can go unturned.

They want to know everything. So we dug into his numbers and sure enough, in his work at Mayo, they had looked at his HRV. They had noted that his HRV was extremely low. The doctor had just said, but it doesn't matter. Because your calcium score is good, all of these things are good, everything is good. This doesn't matter. And that's the problem.

doctor didn't know that that number, same number I saw, right, it's called SDNN, right, it's just an objective measure of, of heart rate variability. Everybody who measures it measures it, you know, roughly the same. If you've got good equipment and good algorithms, you get the same number. But, but that clinician was just like, it doesn't matter. But in my world, it was like, that is a linchpin, right?

Elizabeth Latocha (45:57)
Yeah.

It's a light bulb. Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (46:17)
that is telling us that your system doesn't know how to regulate itself and that's going to affect every other system in your body. Again, it's going to affect your hormones and your digestion and your sleep and all of these things are going to be affected because this system isn't doing its job. And you might be fine, you know, kind of in your young 40s and you've got all of that. But this number we know from from statistics, it's decades of statistics that this number is a is the

best predictor of your future health. And a number this low paints a really bad picture of your future health. And so this might be your most important metric. That and the fact that he did have, in his EEG, he did have a profound brain injury that he did know about, but felt that it wasn't having an effect and therefore never sought treatment.

it was having an effect just not cognitively, like not on his cognitive function, but it was having a profound effect on his physiological functioning. So by addressing that brain injury and helping that part of his brain heal, his physiological system got better, which allowed, again, all of these other aspects of functioning to come back online that filled out a whole area of his life that had basically deflated.

He couldn't function there, so he just ignored it and put all of his attention into another area. So very kind of lopsided development, in terms of being a human being and all that is potential for us to enjoy about being human, all of the different ways we can realize our potential. There was a whole sector of his humanity that he couldn't inhabit, but then he got that back.

Elizabeth Latocha (47:52)
Sorry.

Nice,

yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (48:14)
Yeah, so, so,

you know, it is to say that that even for him with the access to the absolute best of the best of medicine and and being highly compliant, like, you know, at the recommendation of his doctors, he changed his diet and he felt like that really helped. And he did some other modifications kind of in the exercise world was actually like to do less because he was doing too much and actually kind of depleting his system. He was

He was causing more physiological damage than he could repair in a 24 hour period. So he backed off to a level that his system. So a lot of positive changes. And yet still in the midst of that, this really key system had been shelled relative to its importance. So it is to say, don't really

Elizabeth Latocha (48:50)
Right.

No.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (49:12)
As much as anything I might say might sound like I am pointing a finger or blaming or anything, it's not because the same thing happens. know, we, we in our clinic, we miss things, right. That we just didn't see. But also I will also, so, you know, we, again, as an example of this, we had somebody come in, we did it, know, QEG. So they're in for, for kind of mental health reasons, basically anxiety and.

One of things that we notice is that they're not really able to do the process of the QEG, the neuroimaging, right? Their nervous system can't be still enough for us to get a good imaging of the brain. So how I handled this, you know, three years ago before I learned what I know now, and that's part of being an integrally informed practitioner. Well, now with that same client, I could say, Hey, you know what?

I think there's probably, we could probably help you, but we can't help you yet because your system isn't able to regulate in this way. We can't really get a good accurate read of your brain, which means we're not going to be able to do a very good treatment. So training with us is not going to get you the results that you want, but there is a doctor that, that, who, who works specifically in this area. And we recommend you go and see him do his intake process.

If he sees what we think he will see, which is that the problem is really a visual motor problem, so then he can help you with that. If he can resolve that with you, then you'll be able to do our process. Right? So that was a referral that I could make, but I could make now, but I couldn't have made three years ago because I didn't know that that

Elizabeth Latocha (51:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (51:11)
that existed and why and how to fit it in. And so I'm an example of not having the knowledge at hand to guide my client in the optimal way that years later I would have been able to. But we're all like that. mean, no matter how much we teach doctors in medical school, we can't teach them everything. mean, Lord knows they try, but.

Elizabeth Latocha (51:15)
All right.

Yeah. Right.

Well, it's, yeah.

And it's a matter of basically, you know, you're all working for the same end result, right? So it's, it's, you'd rather like a patient would rather have that doctor be upfront and say, Hey,

I don't have the answers for you. I don't have the answers for you. But I know somebody because we partner together. And it's not a, because a lot of doctors do, obviously they have like an ear specialist, know, EMT or you know, this and that, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a whole, you know, our system is, as you mentioned in that last example, is that you,

you know the the doctors look at one thing one specific thing but if they're not looking at the whole system right so like you you're looking at a specific area that generates and that if something is off can affect the other systems

So that's the difference in terms of the thinking, in terms of the approach. Like you said, integrate of all of that. But to get back to, yes, you utilize who you trust, right? So that this way it is not just, oh, well, I can't help you, but I can give you X, Y, and Z for now.

And you know, that is it sent you on your way, right or or not even say I can't help you just be like Well, here's this hopefully it helps, you know, so Again, and and like you said it's not to say we're not here to to bash anybody. It's just matter of An approach right? It's an approach of the whole being and that's what we are and our bodies were made

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:21)
Yeah.

Elizabeth Latocha (53:40)
bodies and mind all together systemically, we're made to work on its own, we're made to function. And if we can let the intelligence thrive, that's when we're thriving, basically. Yeah, awesome.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:58)
Yep. Yep.

And I'll just add a little bit to that. And then I want to just like kind of circle back to our main topic for a moment with around.

Elizabeth Latocha (54:06)
Well, I'm just gonna, I'm sorry. I just

wanna just understand. I'm a little out of time. So we're gonna have to, but no, no, go on here. I just didn't wanna like, you know, yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (54:14)
Yes.

Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely. So I just want to say, one of the things again, merging out of the field of bioelectric medicine is this understanding of how complex we are and taking into account our complexity as a physiological organ, the body, a network of neurons and electrical activity, chemical activity, the brain, and then the mind. And then more than that, right? Like whatever goes beyond. But right now kind of a hand around

body, brain, mind, and their complexities. And that this understanding that as good as say, like artificial intelligence is right now, there isn't enough computational power in the world to track the variables that we know about in the human system. So there's just no way we can ask a single human being or even a team of human beings to be able to track all of the variables in our functioning to be able to say,

You've got that going on. know what that is. It's it's impossible. So we're all doing our best to try and figure it out. Again, whether, you know, whatever the, whether it's a doctor or a Reiki provider, you know, there, we're all doing our best to try and figure out this unimaginably complex system that can break down across thousands of variables on multiple levels.

and there's just no way of opening the hood and pouring in bolts will fix your car. Like you just can't pour in serotonin and be like, there's the depression treatment. No, we know that that doesn't work. And if we think about it for a second, it doesn't take that long to know it could never work. You know, so we need, we need a better conception and then better treatment. And then, and then we got to have to include the patient in this that I will say that depressed patient that I talk about.

she got better because she kept trying to get better. And so we need that side of it too. We need providers doing all they can. We need people doing all they can in terms of not giving up and continuing to try and apply the wisdom and intelligence that we have at hand.

Elizabeth Latocha (56:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you and I just want to when you said circle back, you actually went through unless you have, you know, one screaming thing that that you wanted to share, then by all means, we can definitely make that time. But you know, the

The example that you gave, the extensive example, I think just like again, that was a light bulb of hope, of understanding that it's not just linear, it's not just one way. It's the questions and then it's also how, know, the bioelectric medicine, but just in general. Like it's just a matter of treating the root cause of depression

or just in general, the examples that you gave. So very, very, very well. Loved it. Love it. I could, literally, if I could talk to you more that we, third time, so obviously the conversations just keep getting richer and richer. Unfortunately, time is not on my side. I wouldn't want to take up your time either, but definitely a rich conversation and where can

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (57:33)
You

Elizabeth Latocha (57:53)
people find you.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (57:56)
The simplest place is cerebralfit.com, cerebralfit.com. And there they'll find phone number, email, opportunity to book a free 15 minute consult, a ton of information as well. So cerebralfit.com is the simplest way. And then from there, you have all accesses.

Elizabeth Latocha (58:18)
amazing. As always I'll link everything up in the show notes so people please do look at the show notes which is description everything will be there.

Thank you so much, Guy, for being on here again, sharing your knowledge and this one, and all of them, but this one definitely, your examples and your knowledge and just what you do, it breathes a sigh of relief a little bit of knowing that there are people like you out there.

that it's not just the caring, it's just the understanding and that key, a key that you hold. So thank you.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (58:57)
Yeah.

Thank you. It was a delight talking to you as always. Keep up the good work of helping people have more access to really to keys. mean, that's in many ways, that's what you're doing is you're helping people learn that there are keys out there that might be worth trying. And so keep spreading the word. Thank you.

Elizabeth Latocha (59:19)
percent, well always. And to my audience, you are worth it. Have a good one. Take care.