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welcome to the true Hope cast podcast where we take a deep dive into mental Health's many physiological and

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psychological aspects this is the show for you if you're looking for motivation inspiration knowledge and solutions and

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that's what we're all about here at true hope Canada and true hope Canada is a mind and body based supplement company

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dedicated first and foremost promoting brain and body Health through non-invasive nutritional means for more

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information about us you can visit truehopecanada.com today I welcome a neurology nurse practitioner Kelly

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Tuttle Kelly joined the head injury survivors Club in 2015 the night another car

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pulled in front of her as she was driving it wasn't until three months later though that she realized that something was seriously wrong Kelly's

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traumatic brain injury or TBI marked the beginning of a new life and a personal journey of self-rediscovery

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Kelly wants TBI patients to know that there is hope she got better and they can too today we're going to be

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discussing tbis and strategies that people can use to start supporting brain

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healing enjoy the show okay Kelly hi welcome to True Hope cast thank you for being with

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me today you've got your festive outfit on you're looking good you're certainly making me look a lot less festive with

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that bright red jacket on but how are you what is going well I am doing good Simon thank you so much

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for having me on I'm really excited to be here to talk to you and your listeners excellent well let's just jump into it

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can you just let us know who you are and what it is that you do please well um I'm Kelly Tuttle I'm a neurology

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nurse practitioner and I'm also a traumatic brain injury Survivor

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all right interesting well it's so cool that um so many of people's what ends up

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being their career and their passions and their drives it always comes from a

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place of a personal experience and it's I find that so fascinating because it just it's a big indicator of how the

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worst thing that could ever happen to you could be the best thing it could be the biggest the biggest lesson that you

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ever have and It ultimately um defines you and creates such positive

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things in the future so would you be interested to tell us a little bit more about that that kind of like that birth

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of that story oh yeah definitely so originally I was a Cardiology nurse

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practitioner uh for 20 years and um I I'm also a big martial arts

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Enthusiast I was leaving work one evening and to go to karate class I was

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prepping for my third degree black belt and um I at the time was working at a

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somewhat Rural clinic so leaving I was traveling on a like a country type Road

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and um as I was driving a teenager pulled out in front of me and I ended up

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t-boning her and that was the start of my personal self rediscovery

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and um with my efforts of trying to get better get back to work get back to training

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and martial arts um I was reading a lot about traumatic

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brain injury the injury uh the brain itself and so forth and then I just had

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this I was more passionate than about Neuroscience

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neurology so um I was on it on a deck talking to a

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girlfriend of mine one day and I was telling and she was asking me well how are you doing how how's your recovery

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going and I was telling her oh man I'm reading all these books and trying to learn as much as I can because I really want to

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get better and get better as fast as I can and she goes you know you really should

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think about going into neurology because you would be more of a compassionate

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provider because you've been there done that basically and I hadn't even thought about it until

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she said that and I got so excited I ended up staying up all night looking up

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ways to become a neurology nurse practitioner and I worked on it and two

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years later I was accepted into the position in the neurology department that I work in now

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and so I trained out of the neurologist learned everything I could that I needed to know to help take care of the

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patients there and the same friend um said you should write a book and of

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course didn't occur to me to write a book and I was like yeah maybe I'll do that and as I was practicing as a nurse

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practitioner I was finding that people were struggling with the same thing I

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was struggling with to get better and that was just finding out how to get

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better that it just seems like at the time for me it seemed like the

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information was really scattered and widespread and I had to spend a little a lot of energy to find those nuggets that

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worked best for me and with my friends saying hey you should write a book I thought yeah I'd

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like to write a book I would like to write a book that really focuses on how to get back to work how to get

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keep studying while recovering from a brain injury and I wanted it all in one

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little spot for whoever needed it to find it and use it in their recovery

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interesting so being specialized in cardiology and then shifting that over to neurology

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obviously with conventional medicine we have specializations in different areas of the body which is very valuable was

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that a difficult transition like were you we was he were you seeing similar

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things in neurology obviously you're seeing patients who are coming in with a problem right that's obviously a connection there but like in regards to

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like the the different parts of the body were you seeing any connections there and was it was it an easy transition

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I would not say it was an easy transition um I would say that I was

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it was helped by the fact that I was seriously goal driven and it was something I wanted to do

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and at the time when I took the job I was still recovering from my brain

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injury and um it was

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I still had the memory issues the focus and the intention and so I had to develop tools and strategies to help me

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put all that overwhelming information that I was getting from the neurologists

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and organize it in a way that I could reference it quickly when I needed it when my patients needed

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it but I loved the subject I loved the

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patience I could totally understand where they were coming from and kind of

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dealing with and I and because of that I was able to make connections with them and that really supported my efforts to

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continue to be a better neurology nurse practitioner more knowledgeable as the

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years passed can you tell us what a neurology nurse practitioner is I don't know if

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everybody would be familiar with what nurse practitioners do especially ones that specialize in different areas of

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the body so can you just tell us a little bit about the background about what what that position holds what it is

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that you do perhaps and like why somebody might be coming to see you yes

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petitioner is a registered nurse that goes back for additional education it could be a master's degree to doctorate

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level um and you learn how to bridge nursing and

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Medicine and what I tell a lot of my patients the

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difference between a physician and a nurse practitioner is that the Physicians learn a lot about disease

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processes diseases and treatments and nurses go to school we learn how to

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help the patient live with that disease

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interesting so it's a it's very much a knowledge-based communication like

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certainly like a middle ground but obviously being able to support those people specifically with a TBI and

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what's the um you know say if I'm playing I'm playing soccer or if I'm in a car accident you know like I'm and I

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have and I hit my head obviously there are different degrees and severity of a particular injury but what would um

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classify as a traumatic brain injury therefore somebody coming to see you

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yes that's a really good question um and a lot of patients are left to wonder

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if they have a concussion or a traumatic brain injury um

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and a concussion or a traumatic brain injury can occur from a fall

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a Blow To The Head um it can happen you know as you said in

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sports in car accidents um in a bar brawl uh there's a lot of

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domestic violence survivors are also traumatic brain injury survivors but essentially

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so you can if I could go back a little bit you can have a brain injury

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from a direct Blow To The Head but you can also have a concussion brain

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injury from a sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head and body

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and then there's another way you can sustain a traumatic brain injury or

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concussion and that's from a blast the the you know the the physical force of

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that Blast has has the ability to impact the brain also

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interesting yeah that's that's that that's cool I mean it's uh very important to obviously

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and probably quite tricky to be able to figure out like you know you've had a head injury and I'm sure even if people

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are having car accidents and sports injuries every incidence is going to be completely different especially when it comes well in all of those situations I

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suppose right what they're hitting the head against uh how fast etc etc and obviously I'm sure like

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um taking into consideration like your actual like bone density and your skull is probably like something that you need

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to look into as well so many so many complex parameters in regards to how bad it is for you and obviously we all um

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experience pain and Trauma be that physical psychological in different ways as well so like your perception of

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what's Happening inside of your brain within your body is going to be different for each individual as well so

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it's it sounds it's going to be unbelievably complex to kind of help a patient kind of like through that

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um what did you what did you do what was your kind of treatment protocol was it quite conventional did you try

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alternative therapies I know that there are many different things available for people with

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um with brain injuries concussions Etc and it's and it's amazing that we do have so many of these options available

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and we've I think we're getting more information um coming down to the general public

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about about the importance of taking care of yourself if you if you suffered a concussion especially with kids and

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sports and things like that I know here at true hope we've got some X NHL players who suffer greatly throughout

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their career and then even more significantly in their later years and some of our products have like what

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brought people back from the the darkness of you know deep dark depression due to constant chronic uh

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concussions that you know they could have multiple concussions in one game you know like rather than taking six

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months off from the sport they might be taking two minutes off from the ice so it's serious it's it's something that's

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getting more and more attention which is wonderful which means you know more more funding is going to go into the research more awareness more amazing people like

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you that are you know stepping into that field so um yeah just like back to my

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initial question what what did you do and was it like a conventional approach

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um you know there really isn't a conventional approach the researchers

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are trying to um chisel that out um but

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there are no like specific guidelines um and

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what I've seen and what I've heard from my patients and seen from my own

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experience is that it's basically you you have to seek out care based on your

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symptoms and because like you said earlier the brain

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is so complex I often tell my patients that they may have to see several

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Specialists or in or a therapists to get the care that they need because

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not one person not one provider or special specialty can Encompass all the

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Care the brain needs and um so with my patients in neurology they

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come to me in anything that has to do with the brain they ask me about and they think oh you know the neurologist

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should help me and myself as a patient I saw a neurologist and the neurologists

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General neurologists that I practice with really deal with brain diseases

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such as epilepsy multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's

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um but not necessarily traumatic brain injuries um they do have I'm not saying they don't have experience I'm just saying

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that they they're generalists so they have some knowledge but they're

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you really if you're going to see a neurologist the best question to ask is what's your experience with treating

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patients with traumatic brain injury and if it's not something they're passionate about or they haven't been doing for

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years you may want to seek another neurologist that maybe is passionate and

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has gone out of their way to get that knowledge and expertise but there's a

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psychiatrists there's psychologists there's behavioral optometrists there's

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behavioral neurologists there is a vast field of Specialties that can help you

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with your brain injury but it's going to really be key in you finding that what that provider

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that can help you with that specific symptom that is also trained and has

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experience taking care of traumatic brain injuries yeah it makes me think about the

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the most people think about the the symptoms of TBI and how that might be different for different people whether there are common symptoms for different

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people um I think about the actual obviously the impact of that area of the body that

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is obviously protected by bone but um you know if I have like a muscle injury playing soccer like genuinely

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like the pain is very local could be like numbing it could be on a scale of like you know discomfort or

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like or pain itself but then we're talking about the brain and obviously it's made up made up of specific types

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of matter but we have different parts of the brain doing different processes so like you know

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are getting cracked on the head in one area or another would that affect different symptoms within me because

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obviously the brain has different functions or is it just like are there very common symptoms that like most

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people will experience with with a TBI um I would say that

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there are some general comments symptoms but it does depend on the impact uh

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where the where the head is hit can affect uh the symptoms like for instance

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I had a patient who was struck in the back of the head and um her difficulty was with dizziness and

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balance um I have read that if you're struck on the crown of the head the parietal area

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you could have difficulty with your visual processing and reading

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um so but just because you're hit on a specific part of the brain if you think

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of the brain in the skull it's kind of like um a jelly it's like a mold of jelly and

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it Jiggles you know with the impact right so just because you're hitting one

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specific area doesn't mean it's not going to affect a process that's on the other side of the brain or on the bottom

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of the brain versus the top of the brain it's really kind of a cascading effect

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and it happens at the cellular level where the the nerves are connected by

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dendrites and axions and those actually get sheared with the injury they get

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torn off and then with that damage then you have like this biochemical Cascade

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that spills out in those areas of the brain and that's why you get more of

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this kind of generalized um difficulty with cognition and physical

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symptoms with visual problems and Hearing and Balance it's

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it's just like this General kind of like the pun is intended General Blow To The

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Head And it no you know it some cells get affected or

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all of them and it's all different with everyone and the other thing I'd like to say is that

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you do not have to be knocked out you do not have to lose Consciousness to have suffered a concussion or a traumatic

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brain injury and you do not need to be in a coma in a hospital and Intensive Care Unit to have suffered a concussion

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or a brain injury you could have a mild head injury and it can have just as much

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much havoc on your life than someone who has had a hospitalization with a coma

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everyone's different and everyone's recovery is different I always tell my patients your recovery

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is as is going to be as unique as your personality

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yeah and I think that's a really important expectation to put over to to a patient because they

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might research things I could read 100 books on the recovery and it and and that picture just won't be the same for

18:48

them so I think that's probably a really important thing to get across probably early in the treatment process

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in in your experience of treating different people I just think about like like let's just call let's just have

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like a top athlete gets a muscle injury their recovery is most likely going to

19:06

be significantly better not always but probably significantly better than somebody that just like is not an athlete who's you know doesn't exercise

19:13

or whatever obviously due to many factors be that no genetics or just the

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fact that their body is you know they're not probably not eating as much like they say fast food they're eating where

19:23

they're exercising frequently so their body is actually used to Turning um their good food into kind of like you

19:29

know good ingredients to produce different tissues and cells organ systems Etc have you seen that recovery

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process be different for um different types of people

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uh you know I don't have uh I don't have enough uh clinical

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patients um to be able to say for traumatic brain injury that I that I uh

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see a difference like in nutrition and things like that but what I can say in my general practice like if I included

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my patients with Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis and um epilepsy and my brain injury patients

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um the ones that eat the healthiest diet and that are active exercising

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they have a better quality of life than those who eat more processed foods and

20:24

live a more sedentary life so nutrition and exercise and sleep are very

20:31

important um Lifestyles uh

20:39

uh I'm sorry last night lost my what I want to say they're very they're

20:44

important lifestyle found that creates the foundation of your recovery yeah

20:49

yeah I think that goes for kind of any injury I suppose because you know I think about

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um what I put in my body and what I don't put in my body now at like you know I'm 38 but I I'm thinking about when I'm 60 70 and 80 I'll be more

21:03

susceptible to other types of health concerns I think about putting my body

21:08

in the position to deal with that better like now so it's going to be used to you know it's used to Healing it's used to

21:14

getting good sleep it's used to moving moving around so that's just kind of like how I think about things but obviously until you actually like maybe

21:20

like have an injury or something we're not actually thinking about the recovery of being injured

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um but that's kind of like a you know a I don't know the self-strategy that I

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want to have I just don't want to you know I think about the two young kids that I've got and I like and if I get a back injury or something then my wife's

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got to pick up all my slack and that's just like not something I don't really want to happen so there are some things I can do like you know I take care when

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I walk outside in the ice because I don't want to slip hurt myself because it's not just me that's going to suffer

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from it so um it's it's interesting that we can take those type of strategies in our

21:55

everyday life to maybe um counteract some of the things that can happen to us because you just never know when you know you might get in a

22:02

car accident or you might slip on some ice or you know you're three-year-old son cracks over the head

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with a wooden toy you just never know um I want I want to talk about the strategies that that have worked for you

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you mentioned diet you mentioned exercise you mentioned um some other things there

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um and obviously everyone's treatment is going to be different you know we could talk about supplementation we could talk

22:25

about um other things that other people that could do but like what strategies have worked for you with t with TBI and I

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wonder now you've got all this experience you've changed your field to be specific towards neurology would you

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have um would you have done anything different in your treatment protocol after your TBI

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um you know I I had a lot of like health issues before uh my car accident and uh

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I I think fortunately I found a plan the plant-based diet I discovered it and

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um embraced it and had I've been on a plant-based diet since 2013 and my car

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accident was in 2015 and I I feel like my recovery would have been

23:18

harder if I had not already had that Foundation that Foundation of exercising

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every uh as much as I was for the with my martial arts

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um and the plant-based diet because like I had said earlier

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um that after a head injury there's this bio chemical Cascade as the cells break

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open and um and then there's debris and the immune system needs to go in and

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clean it all out well there's uh with that there's inflammation and so I

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believe the best nutrition is to eat something that is a low inflammatory diet

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um it you know that will help with um uh addressing those free radicals and

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so forth um that are floating around in the brain and there's even some researchers that

24:11

are saying that that the effects of that bio Cascade uh is continuous for several

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years after the head injury um but I'm also being a Cardiology nurse

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practitioner I'm a I'm a proponent of the plant-based diet because it's been shown to lower risk of Strokes

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um in a trans-ischemic attacks that's when you just have like a small time

24:36

frame with a certain part of the brain isn't getting enough blood because of a clot and it's the body is able to

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dissolve it on its own um but with a traumatic brain injury you

24:47

have an increased risk of later on in life developing dementia well if you

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have a traumatic head injury maybe you've had a couple of traumatic brain injuries

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and then you develop vascular issues in the blood circulation

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of the brain um you can develop vascular dementia or you can have a

25:12

stroke which will increase your risk of developing dementia so

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I believe anything you can do to lower your risk of having a stroke and to

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promote the wellness of your circulatory system uh is your best bet and the

25:30

plant-based diet is low in saturated fats and saturated fats

25:36

are what lay down your cholesterol through your circulatory system

25:42

um and with all the vegetables and fruits that you consume it's low in

25:47

inflammation because if there's inflammation in the blood cells those plaques that have been

25:54

laid down can become unstable and come loose and Lodge down further down the

25:59

pipe Into the Heart either causing a heart attack or in the brain causing a stroke

26:05

yeah it's super I think yeah it's super interesting the the whole um inflammatory issue that goes around just

26:11

having a bad diet anyway and not exercising your body the amount of inflammatory factors that will be

26:18

produced because because of those lacks but that you add in an injury be that to the brain or the heart or wherever that

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may be so difficult for your body if it's not robust and

26:30

um let's just say healthy um being able to declare that debris

26:35

that you were talking about yeah exactly if an area of the body is injured even if you know if you see your skin is

26:40

bruised you know there's broken blood cells happening if it's in the brain it'd be broken neurons and your body to

26:47

be able to create the space to create more of those those to repair it obviously has to clear that debris and a

26:53

lot of that debris is quite toxic to the body if it's not taken care of well and if your body is not in an able state to

26:59

be able to do that efficiently literally getting it out of the body and breaking it down into let's say harmful into more

27:06

harmful molecules then yeah it's going to linger is going to cause issues and if and diet is such a huge factor and

27:13

you know I've tried every diet that there is during my nutritional training and and there are certainly

27:19

um there are certainly good ones and there's certainly bad ones but like what's so fascinating and wonderful about the plant-based diet which is

27:24

unbelievably well researched by the way for so many different things obviously um is the fact that it is low

27:30

inflammatory and that you're not consuming those foods which you know have these processed sugars in and these

27:36

horrible refined fats that just cause so much damage to the body especially when

27:41

we're talking about like man-made synthetic fats and um sugars that just don't belong in their

27:48

body and your body doesn't even actually have the capability to get rid of it efficiently so it can sit there it can

27:53

linger wreaks Havoc with your microbiome which is obviously very very important for just overall health in general not

27:59

just gut health but brain health as well so yeah having I think yeah I would totally I've never had a brain injury

28:05

before but I've spoken to quite a few people on the on the show about it and nutrition and diet is without question like one of the number one things that

28:12

you can immediately do to help your body heal itself because that's ultimately kind of like what we're doing not we're

28:18

not looking to you know take like one pill or one drug to to fix us because it's complex right it's not just about

28:25

fixing the the area that was actually damaged but as you say this is Cascade which will affect your your whole

28:31

circulation will affect your whole body and I think about if your immune system is having to get rid of all that debris

28:37

that's taking resources away from your immune system which would normally be fighting colds and infections and stuff

28:43

leaving you more susceptible to those other things so we have have to be taking a brain injury systemically we

28:49

have to be thinking about the whole body all of those systems are beautifully synergistically work together and so

28:55

nutrition is a huge aspect and obviously exercise and what would you say about

29:02

um like maybe like sleep obviously no sleep is important but especially for um recovery how what's your

29:09

recommendation for that well um I for all my patients and even

29:16

people with healthy brains I recommend getting seven to nine hours of sleep at

29:22

night and I recommend a a good sleep hygiene which is a sleep

29:29

routine prior to getting to bed um a wonderful book that I learned a lot from sleep was written by Matthew Walker

29:38

why we sleep and um he talks about what he calls a sleep

29:44

opportunity window and that's setting a bracket of time so that you can get that

29:50

seven to nine hours of sleep and so if you say for instance I want eight hours

29:56

sleep you people normally think well I should go to bed at 10 and then I could wake up at six right well that doesn't

30:04

really allow for that sleep opportunity window so you really need to pull it out like another hour or a half hour before

30:11

you really want to go to sleep to create that opportunity for sleep and there's other uh what he talks about

30:18

in his book too is that there's research that shows that sleep hygiene or having a sleep routine is

30:24

um better than treating uh sleep with a sedative or a sleep medication

30:32

um that that type of sleep is different um and

30:38

um the the other thing I'm sorry sorry

30:45

that's my brain injury talking no worries I'm asking you a lot of questions and yeah

30:51

so uh so it's always best to have that sleep routine and what I mean about a

30:56

sleep routine that means um that you're avoiding blue light emitting um devices uh

31:04

if you're uh watching TV or on your iPhone that can minimally lower your

31:11

dose of Melatonin by 30 percent and melatonin is a hormone that we naturally have in our brain that kick-starts our

31:18

circadian rhythm to tell us when to go to sleep the Circadian rhythm tells us when to wake up and when to go to sleep

31:24

and melatonin is a hormone in the brain that helps kick-start the sleep cycle so if you're watching TV or you're on

31:31

your device you're really taking two or three steps back on and pushing that sleep mechanism from initiating farther

31:38

back than it normally would so things like that yeah so I think the the whole routine

31:46

piece I think is so important because I don't think a lot of people understand the the um hormonal complexity of what

31:53

falling asleep and waking up entails and if you have a routine or if you have a

32:00

lack you have no routine that's kind of all over the place um you're really giving your body the

32:06

signal of Chaos and the body doesn't really do well with that so being able to put yourself in a

32:12

routine of yeah like trying to avoid those particular lights and anything to you know strenuous or exciting for the

32:19

Brain before bed um we want to be putting the brain in a position where it's like it's get it it

32:25

knows when to start signaling these hormones because it knows your cues it

32:30

knows your your external factors because you know when we're talking about circadian rhythms

32:35

um originally you know we would you know be woken up by the Sun and we would you

32:41

know begin to um produce the certain hormones for going to sleep with the lack of the lack of the sun with the sun

32:46

going down or the Earth rotating putting the Sun out of you um that's very very important to

32:51

recognize because a lot of people probably don't understand that and the fact that now we just like live indoors

32:56

all of the time and we're not really outside that much getting those cues from the external world is is difficult

33:03

not impossible but very difficult I suppose and the more we can influence

33:08

those external cues literally through our eyes right this is where this this like picks up right it's so important

33:13

and valuable that we do recognize that there's so much that we can do ourselves

33:19

with our behaviors even with our thoughts and emotions I suppose to help us sleep better and um yeah it's just

33:26

interesting that we have so many of these stimulating factors around us that just

33:31

like push us into just poor sleep habits and how that is so detrimental to just Health in general but especially when

33:38

we're trying to recover from something that needs such serious endogenous

33:44

attention like a brain injury correct and a lot of times I tell my patients that sleep isn't a time that

33:50

your brain goes to sleep the sleep is when your brain goes to work it is a brain function and within

33:59

that function are several things when you sleep your brain is modulating your

34:04

emotions so it's taking the stress that you experience during the day and it's softening the edges so you can process

34:11

it better and so then you have better mood modulation when you wake up the

34:17

next day um the other thing it does is it clears out the brain

34:22

that increases the circulation to the brain it opens up these uh these vessels

34:30

uh that absorb they're kind of it's like the lymph system but it's in the brain

34:36

and the lymph symptom in the body is kind of like your your gutters your sewage

34:42

um that a lot of the garbage your immune system collects puts in there and then it's washed away well that happens every

34:48

time you sleep too you're cleaning out the gunk when you're going uh to sleep

34:53

the other thing that happens when you sleep is your brain

34:59

uh is developing memories so during the day when you're walking around or learning something new the brain

35:06

compiles all that information into the hippocampus and if you think of the hippocampus kind of like a a computer

35:13

Drive wand that you can take from one computer to the next if they'll files on it and so forth so you that's the

35:20

hippocampus and then the uh the rest of the uh the rest of the brain is the uh

35:28

hard drive of a computer so if you sleep and you get that seven

35:33

to nine hour sleep that gives the hempa campus time to download all your memories and things that you want to

35:39

remember and what you've learned into the cortex of your brain if you don't give your brain that time

35:45

to do that the memories are going to stay on that on the hippocampus on that hard drive and over time that hard drive

35:52

is going to get it's going to get over overfilled it's and what happens when

35:57

that happens files get lost they get deleted and then you don't have a

36:03

well-functioning memory how have you seen the supplementation

36:09

fit into the role of brain injury recovery

36:15

[Music] specifically to brain injury recovery

36:20

not to say that it's not out there I'm not the know it all be at all but

36:26

um I do recommend um a vegan DHA supplement with a omega-3

36:33

for my patients and if my patients are

36:39

on a plant-based diet I do recommend supplementation with B12 because B12 is

36:46

not naturally found in our vegetables and fruits and legumes and so forth so

36:51

you do need to have that monitored and checked and um and then I do recommend melatonin for

37:00

my patients who struggle uh with sleep or fragmented sleep and fragmented sleep

37:06

is like you're able to fall asleep really easily but you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't go back to sleep

37:12

then I'll recommend melatonin because what I have found with my patients it actually kind of Smooths that out a

37:18

little bit and so that that the time that the patient's awake is is decreased

37:23

and they're able to go back to sleep quicker than without the Melatonin yeah I think yeah I think that that uh

37:32

there's a very good recommendations obviously we're talking about symptom management and we're also talking about you know giving your body what it needs

37:38

to actually recover those those cells and the um the building blocks of those neurons especially like the

37:44

the myelin and all of those like interesting things that are so important in regards to the signaling process do

37:50

you when you're speaking to people about the well I I don't know if you do this but I'll ask you all right when you are

37:57

helping people because I think it's very important to help people understand what's actually happened to them physically I think that that holds so

38:02

much power in regards to them um being able to heal better them actually recognizing what's actually

38:08

happened when they've hit their head and what's happening inside of their body and like what we're going to do is going

38:13

to help you by doing this I think that whole process of understanding is very very powerful in regards to the

38:18

individual to recognize what's actually happening to them rather than just like you telling them to take this or this

38:24

and just they go and do it um do you help people

38:30

um to kind of understand the um like the difficulties in recovery that

38:36

might be coming up I know we touched on that before in regards to how it's going to be different for different people but

38:41

I think like setting up the expectations because I I know people who've had concussions and brain injuries and

38:47

they've recovered pretty good in a couple of months and then I know people that are suffering years years later so

38:52

how do you help them deal with the expectations of going forward with that recovery process and treatment process

38:59

well I kind of tell them exactly what you just said that everyone's different and some people can recover in two weeks

39:05

and some people can take years but in general most people will see the most

39:11

Improvement within two years you'll see the largest and more frequent

39:18

improvements and so what I do tell my patients if they start going

39:24

if their symptoms are persisting longer than a month or in going into two months and they

39:30

start going into that category of post-concussive syndrome syndrome then I

39:36

start talking to them about journaling and because journaling helps you get

39:42

down on paper because you know when you've had a head injury your memory is not that great you know so yeah

39:49

Journal write your symptoms down and um and then also go I like to tell them to

39:57

go you know to this website CDC website or brainline.org where they have a list

40:03

of other symptoms that maybe the person hasn't thought about but it's like oh yeah that I have that and keeping track

40:10

of those symptoms and then um seeing over time how they're

40:16

triggered what makes them worse what makes them better

40:21

um and then um then and and keeping track of that in

40:27

your Journal your treatments your medications your doctors advise your physical therapy information your neural

40:33

therapy information and then when you're having a really hard day when you're at two years and a

40:40

half and you're going I'm still not back to my old self to go back into the

40:46

journal and look back to see how far you've come I always tell my patients

40:52

don't worry about the future don't worry about today what you can't do but it's okay to look back and see

40:58

how far you have come yeah I think that that routine is very very important even just to see like the

41:05

the tiny micro improvements I think that's super beneficial and and it also

41:10

just like goes to goes that kind of fills into that whole idea of having a routine this could be something that you

41:15

would do within that like sleep routine perhaps that would like help you stay stationary sit down focus on something

41:21

else rather than being like distracted by a screen or something I think that certainly goes a long way and um yeah

41:28

that's really cool can you tell us about before we finish up can you tell us about your book a little bit um after the crash is that correct yes

41:35

after the crash had to keep your job stay in school and live life after a

41:41

brain injury and um it has

41:47

um six lifestyle tips to Pro promote brain injury in it

41:53

um and it has um six tips on

41:59

how to get back into life and when I I talk about that I I speak about

42:05

financial issues because if your finances aren't aren't straight and protected then you're not gonna want to

42:11

exercise or eat healthy and and so forth so um I do talk about like job protection

42:19

um in the United States we have the Federal Medical Leave Act applying for that being uh knowledgeable about the

42:27

American Disabilities Act um I talk about uh um requesting a work in school

42:34

accommodations I talk about questions like well when should I should I hire a

42:40

lawyer when should I hire a lawyer because some of these injuries do are

42:45

covered by third party payers such as car insurance and

42:52

um and then I talk about letting go

42:58

and what that's when you get to the point where you think you've gotten the

43:05

to a place where this looks like where I'm gonna Plateau for a little while and

43:12

you need to be able to let go of your losses and grieve over

43:19

what you have perceived as a loss because of your your brain injury but

43:25

also you need to be able to see what your brain injury has brought to you and

43:31

with that comparing the two and including your current uh

43:38

limitations and resources creating new core values what's important to you how

43:46

do you want to go forward is more family time more important to you than it was before your brain injury

43:53

is a more slowed down lifestyle that simplistic is more important to you now

43:59

than it was maybe prior to your brain injury those kinds of things I do talk about in the book

44:05

amazing it sounds like an incredibly um supportive book that you would need

44:11

you know during during that type of a time and um so many factors as we've said before

44:16

like go into um having a brain injury and and or any any injury itself but obviously a brain

44:23

injury comes so many different things like you know if you are unable to do so many of the things that brought you so

44:29

much joy before and you physically can't do those things anymore like that's going to have a deep psychological

44:34

emotional um stress on somebody and if they've never had to deal with

44:39

you know emotional distress in the past it could be very difficult to just have

44:44

to suddenly become part of your world and having a book like that with those resources and it sounds like those those

44:52

tips and those resources and just like the support aspect of that book sounds like it'd be super super beneficial

44:58

um and I yeah I I know with like our with our Flagship products here at true hope Canada and power plus being a broad

45:05

spectrum like connection how important supplementation is just as important as like taking care of your emotional sense

45:13

is very very important and the one particular study that I'm just like thinking of now that we have um for our product and power plus is for

45:21

mic connection treatment of emotional disc control following tbis and I presume that to be a big thing for most

45:28

people that have a traumatic brain injury is well somewhere down the line

45:33

have a dysregulation in some sort of emotion whether that is actually caused by the the physical change in the the

45:39

matter itself within the brain all just from the symptoms that that follow

45:45

um and the fact that we've got these supportive measures out there and you've you've had this experience you've turned

45:50

it into something unbelievably positive you've written a book you've changed your career you're on my podcast we're talking about this this is just so

45:57

unbelievably valuable and I just really want to thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing this and sharing

46:02

these resources and if you just want to finish up and just let me know where I can where I can send people to connect

46:08

with you and maybe pick up the book that would be great uh yes

46:14

um my book is available for pre-order on Amazon and Goodreads and you can reach

46:21

me and contact me at Kelly Tuttle uh

46:28

t-u-t-t-l-e Kelly tuttle.org and that'll take you to my website

46:35

beautiful well I'll make sure that is in the show notes but Kelly you're awesome you're festive with your

46:42

martial arts background as well your ferocious so you've got this festive ferocious thing going on you're a Powerhouse I love it thank you so much

46:49

for coming on true hopecast thank you Simon for having me it's been great awesome well that is it for this

46:55

episode of True Hope cast the official podcast for True hope Canada I will leave links to connect with Kelly in the

47:01

show notes don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet you can also leave us a review on iTunes if you want to that is

47:06

it we will see you next week foreign [Music]