Test Before You Add: Nutrition, Copper and Waking the Brain with Dr. Robert Hedaya

Nutrition After Stroke: Why “Healthy” Isn’t Always Right for Your Brain

If it’s sold as healthy, it must be safe to add to your recovery. Most of us carry that belief without examining it. A new superfood, a trending supplement, a copper bottle that promises better water. The label says healthy, so more good things should mean a better brain.

Then you sit down with a psychiatrist and hear that the copper water bottle is, in his words, “a health risk.”

I went into this conversation expecting a straightforward chat about nutrition after stroke. I never expected it to go where it did.

My guest was Dr. Robert Hedaya, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and founder of The Whole Psychiatry & Brain Recovery Center in New Jersey. This was his fourth and final conversation on the show, after earlier episodes on photobiomodulation, hormones and thyroid, and what blocks brain recovery. Here are the four things he wants you to know.

1. Feed it: your brain needs raw materials

Dr. Hedaya calls nutrition a bedrock of recovery. Neurons need essential fatty acids, protein, and minerals such as magnesium, zinc, copper, and selenium. B12 is needed to make myelin, the sheath that lets neurons fire at the right speed. His rules are simple:

• If it doesn’t grow that way, don’t eat it. Whole foods, not factory products.
• Balance your plate. About a third lean protein, a third above-ground vegetables, and a third healthy fats. He recommends The Zone by Barry Sears.

He is blunt about blood sugar: for anyone recovering from a brain disorder, high blood sugar is your enemy.

2. Test it first: find your baseline

Nutrients aren’t “more is better.” Dr. Hedaya tests B12, free copper, ceruloplasmin (the protein that binds copper), and zinc. B12 absorption can drop after 50 or with acid-blocking medication, so he looks at several markers together. In his patient population, he says, at least half are low in zinc, which neurons need to communicate.

“If you’re trying to recover from any brain disorder, high blood sugar is your enemy.”

3. Question the “healthy” fads

Copper is essential, but too much can harm. Dr. Hedaya says free copper can drive irritability and push zinc down, which is why he’s wary of copper water bottles.

Unlined copper does release copper into what it holds. A lab test of water stored in a copper vessel measured about 1 mg/L after 24 hours in plain water, which the authors judged within WHO and US EPA limits. But the contents matter. Another study found more copper in stored water containing amino acids and organic compounds, and US food-safety rules keep acidic food and drink away from copper. That’s why copper pots are lined, as I said in the interview. Do the maths: two litres a day at that level is around 2 mg of copper from water alone, before you eat anything.

Whether that matters depends on your baseline. With normal copper and good zinc, probably not much. With high copper or low zinc, it’s an extra source, and that’s what he tests for. I found no study of copper bottles in stroke survivors, so treat his “health risk” as a clinical judgment.

His other examples:

• Avocado. One analysis of eight varieties found copper was the main microelement measured.
• Dark chocolate. ConsumerLab testing found 43% of 72 products exceeded California’s lead limit and 35% its cadmium limit, though median levels were below the limits. Brand and serving size matter.
• Birth control pills. A German survey found higher serum copper in women on the pill. His view that copper IUDs do the same is a clinical observation.

4. Wake it up: what HYLANE is, and what it isn’t

His clinic uses HYLANE: hyperbaric oxygen, laser, and neural exercises such as neurofeedback. They’re passive treatments, and he follows Professor Shai Efrati’s protocol, covered in this episode. His limits are clear:

• Dead cells stay dead. Dormant cells can be woken, and progress can speed up, but the work remains.
• Hyperbaric oxygen isn’t for everyone. Infections like babesia or ear-clearing problems can rule it out, and seizures are a small risk. It needs clinician assessment.
• Cost is real. He doesn’t take insurance and sees new patients in person, though he’ll guide an open-minded local clinician. Yes, it’s expensive, and so is not being able to work for thirty years.

The belief to replace it with

“Healthy” isn’t a property of a food or supplement. It’s a relationship between that thing and your baseline. Remember to test before you add anything.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best nutrition after stroke? Dr. Hedaya starts with whole foods and a balanced plate, then tests for deficiencies.

Is a copper water bottle safe after a stroke? Unlined copper releases copper into water, more so with acidic or organic-rich drinks. He calls it a health risk, especially with high copper or low zinc. Ask your doctor to test copper and zinc first.

Can any treatment revive dead brain cells? No. He says HYLANE may wake dormant cells and speed progress.

My book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, is a path to post-traumatic growth after stroke. You can support the show financially on Patreon, and find Dr. Hedaya at wholepsychiatry.com.

Research (via PubMed): DOIs 10.1016/j.jaim.2018.02.134, 10.1007/s10482-010-9435-3, 10.1007/s11356-020-09970-z, 10.1038/s41598-023-50119-y, 10.3389/fnut.2024.1366231, 10.1038/sj.ejcn.1600631, 10.3143/geriatrics.37.304. Food Code summary: Snopes.

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan.

Nutrition, Copper, and Waking the Brain Interview with Dr. Robert Hedaya

Copper water, avocado, dark chocolate: Dr. Hedaya explains why “healthy” depends on your baseline, and what to test before you add anything.

00:00 Nutrition After Stroke
03:50 Two rules for what to eat
07:41 Is a copper water bottle healthy?
14:22 How should you build your plate?
16:13 Are avocado and chocolate safe?
20:40 Is there a passive brain therapy?
30:36 Can therapy revive dead brain cells?
35:25 What if you can’t afford it?

Transcript:

Nutrition After Stroke

Dr Hedaya (00:00)
because you don’t win the battle By being hopeless you win the battle by saying I’m gonna die trying I’m gonna I’m gonna beat this thing. I’m gonna beat it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take I don’t know what turns in the road. I’m gonna take I don’t know what the path is gonna be. I am gonna make this my vocation I’m gonna do this. Of course, you’re gonna have down days, you’re a human being

Bill Gasiamis (00:21)
Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. Today is a milestone episode. This is the fourth and final conversation with Dr. Robert Hedea, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and founder of the Whole Psychiatry and Brain Recovery Center in New Jersey. Over the first three episodes, we covered laser therapy, hormones, and thyroid, and what blocks brain recovery. Today we’re going

Back to something most of us are overcomplicating, nutrition. And then into something I’d never heard of before called Hylain. In this conversation, you’ll hear four things: how to feed your brain the raw materials it needs, why testing your baseline comes before adding anything, why some healthy sounding habits deserve a second look and what Hyane can and can’t do.

Listen for the one idea that changes how you decide what you add to your recovery. Before we begin my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened is a Path to Post Traumatic Growth After Stroke, the field pioneered by Tedesky and Calhoun. Find that at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And remember to support the show financially on Patreon if you can, at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. It helps cover the costs.

Of keeping this podcast going. And I’m grateful to everyone who already supports the podcast in some way, shape, or form, be it financial or by leaving a comment or leaving a five star review. Now here’s my discussion with Doctor Hedaya

Bill Gasiamis (02:03)
Doctor Robert Hedaya, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr Hedaya (02:06)
Thank you for having me, Bill. It’s pleasure.

Bill Gasiamis (02:09)
Thank you for this opportunity as well. We’ve done three episodes already. And previously we’ve spoken about hormones, toxins, laser therapy. it’s been quite a broad range of discussions. And for people watching and listening, I would encourage you to go back and check out those episodes. All the links will be in the show notes because they are a different perspective on how to look at

Healing the brain and recovery after something like a stroke. And today we’re going to touch on some other things that one of the things I’ve never heard of, and one of the other things which we talk about so often, which is overspoken about, which is nutrition. And I think we also overcomplicate it. So if you could kind of give me an indication or an or some information around

how to go about nutrition after a brain injury, how you have found approaching nutrition has been positive and successful for your patients. And then and then we’ll you’ll tell me about HyLane and what it is and how it is applied in a similar situation.

Two rules for what to eat

Dr Hedaya (03:27)
Okay, well, so nutrition is really one of the foundations of recovery after stroke, after chronic illness. For treating chronic illness, it’s really a bedrock, really. Without adequate nutrition, it’s hard to make the best progress and maybe even hard to make meaningful progress. Why? Just think, the analogy I use is like, you know, if you want to make a Big Mac,

You need the sesame seed bun, you need the special sauce, you need the pickle and the patties and the lettuce and the tomato, and that’s you need to make a Big Mac. Well, to make a neuron work, you need certain things. You don’t need a pickle and a bun, okay, but you need things like essential fatty acids, and you need vitamin B12 to make myelin. Myelin is the sheath that helps the neurons fire properly at the proper speed, right? You need the right types of fatty acids, so it’s,

You know, that’s best tested. Nutrition is best tested so you know where you’re falling short. But you know there’s so many raw materials. need adequate protein. You need adequate minerals, magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium. You know, they all do different things and multiple things, right? So you could, copper, for example, necessary to make energy. Too much copper, irritability, rage, anger, right? Zinc.

necessary for the neurons to communicate like the serotonergic neurons can’t really communicate properly, right? So you need enough zinc. The brain has more zinc in it than any other organ in the body. If you have inflammation in your body, say your gut or an infection in your body, then that zinc gets shunted away from the brain and the brain is lacking in zinc. Zinc is necessary for the neurotransmission. It’s necessary to convert

something called ProBDNF to BDNF. So that’s one of the chemicals that helps the brain grow new branches, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So there’s just hundreds, probably thousands of things. So we can’t know all of these things, right? So really you want to work with a really solid nutritional program. And that means in a simple way, a couple of simple rules.

Bill Gasiamis (05:50)
No Big Macs.

Dr Hedaya (05:53)
I’ll put it a little differently. I’ll put it a little different. Number one, if it doesn’t grow that way, don’t eat it. Okay, right, so you never saw a marshmallow tree, so no marshmallows. Okay, you never saw a bread tree, no bread. Okay, you never saw a cookie tree, you never saw an ice cream tree, right? All these, there’s no juice trees, right? So, know, whole fruits, whole vegetables, whole grains, whole, you know, healthy.

properly raised meats and fish of high quality, et cetera. You want it whole foods the way nature meant them to be. That’s number one. Number two, there is a problem, at least in the United States, and I think it’s better in some countries like the European countries, in Israel, for example, the quality of the food is better than it is in the United States. I’m not sure what it’s like in Australia, but.

Bill Gasiamis (06:50)
Pretty

good.

Is a copper water bottle healthy?

Dr Hedaya (06:52)
Pretty good, yeah. In the United States, the food is, you know, the squash looks like squash. Maybe it tastes like squash, but it definitely travels well. know, so it arrives looking great at the grocery store, but it doesn’t necessarily taste like squash. So it’s maybe lacking some nutritional value. So you might want to test and see, well, you might have a specific need for particular nutrients. Like if you have pyrroluria, for example.

you might have a need for more zinc and B6, right? And that’s very important for neuronal function and also mood regulation. So there are specific things each individual may be different in. If you’re over the age of 50, for example, or if you’re on something like Prilosec or an acid blocker, you’re not going to absorb your B12 very well, right? Over the age of 50, you start…

really having trouble absorbing B12. And you may even have an immune reaction to the protein that helps you absorb B12, intrinsic factor. And your immune system could even be attacking that. So what do do? You need B12, parentally, ideally, meaning injected once or twice a week. But before you just do that, you want to check and see how your B12 is functioning. And there’s a few ways of doing that.

One is a B12 level, but the reference range is not great for that. So for me, any B12 level under say 800 in the United States, I don’t know what your reference ranges are, even though that’s well within the normal range, it’s suspicious. But then I’m also gonna look at the red blood cell size, whether there’s any kind of anemia, where’s the iron level, where’s the homocysteine. So we kind of look at it in a dynamic way.

to try and figure out what are the factors involved here. And there’s really no harm to taking a B12 injection unless you happen to have certain types of genetics in which case you could be activated by it. So you might need a different type of B12 because there are different types. This is hydroxycobalamin, there’s methylcobalamin. And then at the regular pharmacy you get cyanocobalamin. But I don’t really like that because each molecule has a cyanide.

in it and it’s fine. It is a poison to your mitochondria. So not a great idea. So you want,

Bill Gasiamis (09:19)
It’s very, it’s very interesting. I’ll let you freestyle a little

bit there because I want to kind of give people a sense of your depth of knowledge and understanding and like how complicated things can get. One of the things that we talk about a lot, people ask me is like, what do I do for my nutrition? And like giving people information about my nutrition is not helpful because everyone’s in a different situation

Dr Hedaya (09:44)
Bye.

Bill Gasiamis (09:45)
than what I’m in and they’re in a different place. And

I

work with a naturopath here at home and the reason I work with a naturopath is so that I can have an understanding of those markers in my bloods that

Dr Hedaya (09:56)
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (09:57)
are benef that are lacking or that need support and the ones where perhaps I need to move away from. One of the things that came up just now for me while you were talking about copper is there’s this new fad about people getting copper containers.

To store their water in. And it’s being promoted and sought and sold as if it’s the newest, most amazing thing that you need to do if you want to be well, feel well, etc. And

Dr Hedaya (10:32)
Whoa.

Bill Gasiamis (10:33)
fads usually drive me insane because it’s just a marketing ploy for somebody to sell a product more than anything. Nobody’s ever looked into it. And we believe what people say online about the newest, latest thing.

And as soon as I saw that copper water bottle one, I was very shocked that this is being now touted as the next you know healthy thing to do for your body. You briefly mentioned just in that early opener discussion, you mentioned that too much copper is no good. Why is drinking or storing your water in a copper container probably to be avoided?

Dr Hedaya (11:15)
Well, copper can be very toxic. Now you do need a certain amount of copper. So let’s say standard levels of copper, depending on the measurements are in the mid-range, great, you do need that. But high levels of copper can be very toxic to different parts of the brain. There’s something called Wilson’s disease. And Wilson’s disease can cause all kinds of neurological problems, also hematological problems and psychiatric problems.

could be very serious. So if you were to do this over time, not only might you get irritable and aggressive and moody, and your zinc will also drop because copper causes zinc to drop, and then your brain becomes deficient in that, really imbalanced, your immune system will become compromised. But you also, down the road, could have long-term neurological problems. It can be connected with Parkinson’s disease, for example.

And it can deposit specific areas of the brain, I think in the striatum, as well as the substantia nigra. But, you know, so that, I’m not certain on where those copper deposits are, but they’re very, they can be very serious. So that’s actually a dangerous thing. Now, your body will compensate to a little bit of a degree, so it can.

can increase something called ceruloplasmin. Ceruloplasmin is the binding protein for copper. So if the ceruloplasmin is holding on to that extra copper, then you have a buffer, right? And if you take some N-acetylcysteine and maybe some selenium and maybe a little glycine and some riboflavin, then you can actually boost your ceruloplasmin production over time. It’s not quick.

but over time, your body probably will adjust it up anyway because it’s sensing too much copper. But you’ll reach a point where there’s just too much copper, free copper running around, and then you start to get the damage. So to me, it’s dangerous, really. And it’s going to be dangerous for people who have psychiatric problems, obviously, and maybe for people who have neurodegenerative problems or proclivities as well.

Bill Gasiamis (13:34)
And especially if you take the advice of somebody selling your product as gospel and you don’t know where your copper levels are, if you’ve never checked them or tested them and you think that what you’re missing is what this person is telling you to buy, well then

Dr Hedaya (13:49)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (13:49)
that’s kind of no matter what the product is, if

Dr Hedaya (13:53)
mode.

Bill Gasiamis (13:54)
you know, if it’s going down a direction of do this so you can be better, but you don’t know what your baseline is, you’re gonna be in trouble. What I’m getting at is there’s a

gonna be a need for testing at some stage in recovery and trying to work out how to heal your brain. There’s gonna be a need for sort of baseline bloods to get you some feedback on where you’re at right now so you can identify the areas to target.

How should you build your plate?

Dr Hedaya (14:18)
Right.

And what you want to do is check the free copper, the ceruloplasmin, and the zinc. So that’s what you want to check. Now, in the United States, in my patients, I check copper and zinc and ceruloplasmin in everybody. And I could say the one person that I think might have two people with low copper, one of them has a

kind of a variant, let’s say, of Wilson’s disease, okay? So, there’s a genetic component to it. It’s just very rare for someone to be too low in copper. It’s very rare. Zinc, yes, very common. So, no, you drink your water out of this copper thing, and you’re probably, you know, I’d say in the United States, you’re probably, in my population anyway, you have at least a 50 % chance of being low in zinc, so drink your water out of this copper thing, and you’re gonna make it worse.

Bill Gasiamis (15:14)
This

previous conversation that we had earlier was about juice doesn’t grow on a tree, a biscuit doesn’t grow on a tree, that kind of stuff. If you think about the food pyramid and how governments specifically try to advise people to eat, there’s been a lot of controversy around the food pyramid of late, one of them being that in the United States, the

Trump administration flipped that upside down and and completely changed it with the help of yeah. Yeah, flipped

Dr Hedaya (15:48)
Amongst other things, amongst other things.

Are avocado and chocolate safe?

Bill Gasiamis (15:51)
everything upside down, yeah. but changed with RFK at the front of that particular program, the food pyramid. Like how much weight do you give to that new Fear Pyram food pyramid? Do you even

bother telling people about the food pyramid. How do you advise somebody who’s very early on in their recovery and has say awareness that nutrition is really important? How do you advise them to eat?

Dr Hedaya (16:24)
Okay, I didn’t bother looking at it. That’s how much weight I put on it. Okay, I didn’t bother. If you ask me what is it, I’d be, don’t know. Here’s what I advise people to do. It’s basically balancing your plate properly, which means about a third of the volume of your plate should be a lean protein. And then about a third of the volume of your plate should be complex carbs, which is above ground vegetables.

And then a third of your plate or your calories will be healthy fats. It could be avocado, but if your copper’s high, you don’t want to eat avocado, right? But it could be olive oil on your salad. You want to basically, the book that I really like is called The Zone, Barry Sears, The Zone. He’s got several books. And it’s about balancing your plate so that you’re getting a good healthy balance of everything.

getting the nutrients that help control your blood sugar because erratic blood sugar and high blood sugar is your enemy. If you’re trying to recover from any brain disorder, high blood sugar is your enemy. Okay, that’s one of your biggest enemies. So if you have too much rice or then you have your gluten-free muffin or whatever, you know, after you have a few pieces of meat or whatever it is, you’re in trouble and you’re gonna make things worse because your neurons are gonna have trouble getting energy and they’re gonna have trouble.

keeping the inflammation down and they’re have trouble healing and you don’t wanna be doing that. You wanna be creating a really pristine environment in your brain and your body so that your body can recover. You know, the brain is plastic, it needs the right conditions and it can recover. It’s slow, it’s too slow, we like it to be faster, all of that’s true. But it can recover.

Bill Gasiamis (18:15)
A low processed carbohydrate diet seems to be the way to go. you said something just now again that got my ears sort of readjusting. If you have too much copper, avocado is no good for you. Why is that?

Dr Hedaya (18:32)
has a lot of copper.

Bill Gasiamis (18:35)
wow, avocado has a lot of copper naturally.

Dr Hedaya (18:38)
The other thing is chocolate. Chocolate, you have to be very careful with because a lot of the chocolate, it’s not because of the manufacturers really, just kind of where the plant grows, it pulls in cadmium from the soil, lead from the soil. I love chocolate, we love dark chocolate, it’s got lots of really good benefits, but I would advise people really to look.

I like consumerlab.com and they test the chocolate to see which ones are low. GRDeli at this point seems to be the dark, I think it’s 73 % dark chocolate is pretty good, pretty safe. But most of the other ones that they’ve tested are not. So, yeah, too much chocolate, you can get a lot. Now you can have your chocolate. If your copper’s okay, you can have some chocolate. It’s not gonna be, your body will adjust to that.

Bill Gasiamis (19:33)
That’s crazy because the amount of avocados that people eat now because of the push towards healthy fats has skyrocketed. plenty of people have also added chocolate to their diet because of all of the benefits that you hear about chocolate, but you

Dr Hedaya (19:49)
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (19:50)
never hear about the downsides. Especially you don’t hear about the dou downsides of like seventy three percent or eighty five percent chocolate. You only ever hear the downsides of milk chocolate, which is a lot of

Processed sugars and other additives to kind of make it palatable and tasty. So that’s

Dr Hedaya (20:08)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (20:09)
fascinating. Today we’ve just basically accidentally landed on more than one reason why we don’t need to use copper to store our water in. It is not a health benefit. It doesn’t support your health in any way. In fact, it could be making you worse. And especially and

Dr Hedaya (20:26)
It’s a health risk. It’s a health risk.

Bill Gasiamis (20:28)
especially if you’re a chocolate and avocado eater.

you’re already getting enough of those trace minerals.

Is there a passive brain therapy?

Dr Hedaya (20:35)
And

if you’re on birth control pills, you’re very likely to have high copper levels.

Bill Gasiamis (20:43)
Wow.

Why?

Dr Hedaya (20:46)
The estrogen somehow, I’m not sure what the mechanism is, but the estrogen seems to promote high copper.

Bill Gasiamis (20:54)
A storing of copper or an extraction from the food, a larger amount sort of being extracted from the nutrition?

Dr Hedaya (21:00)
Well, you’re

extracting it, I guess, and you’re storing it. But I don’t know the mechanism, but it’s there. So I see it regularly. mean, pretty consistently, actually. And people with IUDs that are copper, for example, these are the things that we look for. I almost always try to get people to take that out.

Bill Gasiamis (21:27)
I never expected the conversation to go down this direction. That’s so fascinating to me. So underspoken about those types of nuances when it comes to nutrition. People talk very broadly about you should do this, you should do that. And then every once in a while somebody has too much of a product left over in the factory. They turn it into something and then they tell you that it’s the next fad. And people just assume that it is and go for it.

Dr Hedaya (21:52)
Mm-hmm. say

Bill Gasiamis (21:54)
If we

Dr Hedaya (21:54)
the two messages are if it doesn’t grow that way Don’t eat it balance your plate make sure you get at least three meals a day Plan for times when you’re out and about try to plan it takes planning. It’s not so easy but the diet nutrition is foundational

Bill Gasiamis (22:12)
Yeah. And chefs know this about copper because they’ll have amazing copper pots and pans, but they’ll always be lined with something on the inside. I I think they’re lined with tin,

Dr Hedaya (22:24)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (22:25)
so that they can keep the food separate from the copper because I know acidic

Dr Hedaya (22:28)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (22:29)
foods make the copper leach out of the metal and then enter the food.

Dr Hedaya (22:35)
Mm-hmm.

All right. All right.

Bill Gasiamis (22:39)
Unbelievable.

Dr Hedaya (22:40)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (22:42)
You’re listening to Recovery After Stroke, and I’m talking with Dr. Robert Hedaya about nutrition and brain recovery. So far, we’ve covered feeding your brain, the raw materials it needs, testing before you add anything, and why some healthy sounding habits like copper water bottles, avocado, and dark chocolate, among them, depend on your baseline. Dr. Hedaya mentioned the zone by Barry Sears for balancing your plate.

and consumerlab.com for checking chocolate brands. Both are in the show notes along with the research I found on copper, chocolate and avocado. remember to subscribe so every new episode finds you. Next we get into Hylene Hyperbaric Oxygen, laser and neural exercises. So let’s get back to the conversation.

Bill Gasiamis (23:33)
what’s HyLane? Tell me about HyLane. We’ve spoken about it briefly. it seems to be one of your protocols. Can you give me a little bit of information about what that is or why people might want to think about that way of approaching neurological recovery?

Dr Hedaya (23:48)
So, HyLane is hyperbaric oxygen, laser, and neural exercises such as neurofeedback. HY, hyperbaric oxygen, LA, laser, and E, neural exercises. These are basically in-brain treatments, they’re treatments that you can do, it’s very passive, right? You sit in the H-Bot where the laser is applied, or you watch a movie for the neurofeedback.

There’s there’s no shots, there’s no nothing, right? So you can actually bypass a lot of the stuff that’s going on in the body to kind of wake the brain up, wake certain parts of the brain up using these methods. So the hyperbaric oxygen has been around for a long time, many years, and it’s essentially putting you into a chamber that puts you at a pressure that’s…

say one and a half times the pressure in our regular atmosphere. That’s roughly how you would feel if you jumped into a pool and you went 10 feet down. That’s the level of pressure you would feel on your body. It’s one and a half atmospheres or so. And the hyperbaric oxygen chamber can go as high as I think two and a half, probably more, but two and a half atmospheres. But we use lower pressure in our clinic, but some people use higher pressures.

I think you get a lot out of the lower pressures without having to have the hard chamber. So you can actually have a chamber in your home. You can actually purchase one. So that actually is, I think that in a general sense, is a tonic for the whole body. And it seems to generate new neuronal growth, vascularization. are actually studies that show clearing of the brain function.

in people with Alzheimer’s disease. And it’s been known for a long time to help heal wounds, using diabetes, brain injury. We use it a lot for people with traumatic brain injuries, et cetera. So it’s got many, many mechanisms, lowering inflammation, enhancing the antioxidant status, et cetera. So that’s a kind of a foundational thing that we do. The only time we wouldn’t do it is if someone can’t go into the chamber because they can’t clear.

their ears or if they have certain types of infections that they’d actually get worse like babesia. It’s a tick-borne infection that loves oxygen, so you don’t really want to put someone in the chamber with more oxygen, right? So.

Bill Gasiamis (26:26)
So that

then goes to a caution around just getting an oxygen chamber at home unsupervised and getting in it.

Dr Hedaya (26:33)
Yeah, right,

right, yeah, yeah. You don’t want to just grab one. want to certainly try it. If you feel better afterwards, you probably don’t have a Babesia. If you have a Babesia, you’re going to probably feel worse in the days afterwards or right afterwards. But it’s something that should be assessed by a clinician for sure. You don’t want to go in it if you’ve had a pneumothorax in the last year or if you’re prone to pneumonia or things like that.

But it’s a very good treatment, and most people can do that. So that’s one thing that we do. And the way we do it, we follow the Shai Efrati protocol, which is from Israel, where we basically

Bill Gasiamis (27:21)
Shai Efrati.

Shai Efrati.

Dr Hedaya (27:25)
I don’t know his first name, but it could be. Yeah? you have. Yeah, yeah. So, you

Bill Gasiamis (27:27)
Yeah, Doctor Shai Efrati. I’ve interviewed him. Yeah.

Dr Hedaya (27:31)
know, his protocol, he’s got basically like a period of time on 100 % oxygen, then you take the mask off, and the body kind of thinks it’s starving for oxygen, and it induces certain factors for the body to then start producing the mitochondria and the growth factors and the vasculization, et cetera. And then we’ll do 20 minutes on with the 100 % oxygen, then we take the mask off.

and then we put it back on, we go through three cycles, three and a half cycles of that, and we do that, we try to do that five days a week for 40 to 80 sessions. So that’s the hyper back piece of it. And there’s a small, it’s controversial, there’s a small possibility that some people could have seizures from it, so you have to be careful and be alert to that. I had someone with.

Seizures who did it, who seizures actually cleared. So it kind of depends, I think, on the person, right? So that’s something to be aware of. And then there’s the laser. The laser is a certain wavelength of light. We use 810 and 1064. it’s like a wave in the ocean. And the peak-to-peak frequency is 810 nanometers, very narrow, right?

1064 nanometers. And it’s a laser, so it’s like coherent light, meaning all the waves are traveling together. They’re not canceling each other out. Now, most of that light, so what we do is we do a quantitative EEG. We look at the brain, put a cap on, and measure the electrical patterns in the brain. And then we really put that through AI. And we…

compare your patterns to other people your age and sex using a national institute of health database. And then we can see, look, in this area your patterns are off and we can go into much tremendous amount of detail. But then we know where the patterns are off. And with that knowledge and your symptoms and an MRI.

Can therapy revive dead brain cells?

We look at all three, it’s like a GPS. We try and put them together so we know what to do. And then we can say, okay, if it’s appropriate for you to have a laser treatment, we know where to do it. And then we apply the laser. So we might, in some of them, typically, let’s say an aphasia from a stroke, we’ll apply it to the left side, for example. know, some people have had injuries that have visual sensitivity to bright lights, for example. Then we will look to see if there’s something in the back of the head.

or maybe the front and the back, because there’s tracks that go from the front to the back. If you cut two, three tracks that go front to back, and they can affect your reading and your facial discrimination, prosopagnosia, facial blindness, things like that. So we can actually tell all the tracks which ones are misbehaving, and we can see them. And we can then target those tracks also with neurofeedback. So we can say,

These tracks say in a lot of different networks will say the default mode network. The default mode network is, I call it the worry network. You just worry about this, worry about that. It’s like your narrator that’s talking about your life. It’s like a tennis ball machine. If you ever played tennis with a tennis ball machine, every 10 seconds another ball comes. Well, with the

Bill Gasiamis (31:10)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Hedaya (31:11)
default mode network, every 10 seconds comes another thought, another thought.

And it can really get out of control. And so that, if let’s just say for argument’s sake that that is the problem, then we can actually train that down into the normal range. So we can be so specific. I mean, it actually boggles my mind really. so that’s kind of when we put these three together, it’s basically the

Hyperbaric is in a way a tonic for the body and the brain, and the laser is providing in a simple, immediate way energy to the brain, and then you go into the gym and you work out the networks, right? So it’s kind of like going to the gym, maybe you have an energy drink, then you do your biceps, you know, something like that.

Bill Gasiamis (32:06)
So

they are done in conjunction or at separate stages or during the same week? How do they work?

Dr Hedaya (32:11)
It

depends on the person. Sometimes we will do the hyperbaric plus the laser, or sometimes we’ll do the, almost always doing the hyperbaric as a base, and then the laser, we may be not able to do it if there’s hyperactivity in the brain. We have to wait till we can calm that down, and then we can do it. And then we might do the neurofeedback with the laser or even without the laser. Everybody’s different.

know, one size fits all,

Bill Gasiamis (32:44)
Is there a

g a guaranteed result? So one of the big challenges that stroke survivors face is they have deficits. Some of the deficits are really life-challenging and difficult to overcome and deal with, whether you’re overcoming them emotionally and mentally or actually physically, they could be really debilitating. And the hope is when they come across a new study or a new protocol or something, is that if I go there, they are going to be able to reverse my deficit. So I’m not going to have

the

damage in my brain anymore. How do we manage that part of the conversation? Because unfortunately every single thing that I’ve come across, none of it fixes brain cells that are dead.

Dr Hedaya (33:29)
They’re they’re dead. That’s it. Okay, now other parts of the brain can take over over time. There are liminal cells. Liminal cells are cells that are alive, but they’re not doing their job. Those can be woken up by the laser or by these treatments, right? So I think the paper that I told you about, the first case that I ever treated with facial blindness, right? One treatment and…

All of sudden her problem was cured. And I’ve seen this actually with a few people with head injuries also, particularly from the occipital area. You know, two or three treatments and they’re reversed. So, but that I’m not going to, that’s not most of the time. So what can you expect if you have a stroke and you’re wanting to recover functions is that these treatments can help accelerate your progress. They’re not going to bring dead cells alive.

You’re going to have this still work to be done and it takes time, but it does accelerate the process.

Bill Gasiamis (34:37)
It accelerates the process of kind of creating the optimum

Dr Hedaya (34:39)
recovery.

Bill Gasiamis (34:40)
the optimal environment for bringing back online cells that are not dead. Maybe they’ve been injured peripherally or they’ve been taken out of action or they’re just offline. they kind of live in the penumbras and they could kind of be rehabilitated to get back to an an energetic state.

What if you can’t afford it?

Dr Hedaya (35:00)
So that’s one piece of it. And the other piece of it is just think of the whole brain, the rest of the brain, right? It’s been also under assault, right? And not obviously uncommonly there’s depression as well, right? So the brain energy for other reasons, including hormonal reasons, nutritional reasons, environmental toxin reasons, know, all the rest of the brain may still be under pressure.

and this can bypass it. And I’ll give you an example. Now this is very different than a stroke, but I’m treating a kid who’s 12. And his mother, I have never treated anyone who’s 12, but his mother came to me, she wanted to try the laser. He had a real problem, behavioral problem, impulsive, unable to read, ADD, whatever you want to call it, and home school, et cetera, really creating problems in the family.

But it’s a solid family. Long story short, treat him with the laser and neurofeedback. After four weeks, he’s reading for an hour. He’s helping clean the house without being asked. He’s got, you know, a total change. The kid is behaving normally, okay? Now, this is the amazing thing. We just got a lot of labs back just yesterday. He’s got all of these infections. He’s got four or five infections going on.

So the laser, particularly, allowed me to bypass the effect of the infections on his brain. But we still got to treat those infections. We got to take care of that because otherwise you stop the laser, it’ll go back to where it was. All right.

Bill Gasiamis (36:42)
Were there signs

that their infections in hindsight now were a thing or is it just, well these weren’t visible, like we didn’t know and therefore we assumed it was behavioural?

Dr Hedaya (36:52)
No, no, no, he’s had immune problems.

No, he’s had immune problems for maybe all of his life. he had some, like Lyme was treated. But now I see, yesterday I saw, he’s got an active mycoplasma infection. He’s got two infections in his intestine at a strong high level. And, you know, just a bunch of things. And these things all affect the brain. That we know. So it’s the same with stroke, right?

Although when you’re older, your brain doesn’t respond like a 12-year-old, but same process. So this is why it’s not the laser alone, but I will say that sometimes I could say, a patient would come to me and they’re not ready for this whole functional medicine thing. It’s just too much. Don’t have the bandwidth for this. Don’t have the money for this.

I don’t mind starting with the high lane because it’s passive. They don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to do a million tests or anything like that. And it bypasses the problems, not always, but a significant number of the time, I would say 80 % of the time, maybe a little more. You can bypass and get the brain going again. And then, OK, I’m feeling better. You know what? I’m ready to look at some of those things.

So there’s different ways, everybody’s different.

Bill Gasiamis (38:18)
Yeah.

it’s it sounds like a it’s a very comprehensive program. However, what are the challenges of people being able to access that type of program? I imagine cost will be one of those.

Dr Hedaya (38:32)
Cost is one of them because we don’t deal with insurance. So the cost is a significant factor. And if you ask me, well, how much does it cost? If you’re going to do, first of all, I don’t treat people over Zoom anymore. I’ve had it with Zoom. I’m only treating people live. My old patients, okay, continuing, but only Zoom.

only in person. So the cost for the evaluation with the acute.

Bill Gasiamis (39:08)
Not no not necessarily

for the evaluation, Dr. Hedaya. What I mean is like the f number of sessions for hyperbaric, you know, and the number of sessions for the laser and all that kind of stuff over the period of time can be quite significantly quite significant, the cost, right? So it’s like

What some people will be able to access there, others will be listening to it to and saying, Well, I won’t be able to do that. There’s no way. You know, how do we kind of bring everybody into the fold without everyone coming to a clinic, whether it’s yours or somebody else’s, and paying the money to to to kind of put that kind of protocol in place. One of my biggest challenges is w when I’m dealing with

interviewing people about the products and services that they offer to help people support is that I can’t make it accessible to everybody. Not everything is accessible to everybody. But there’s got to be some way that we can kind of go, hey, you might not be able to get here, A. B. You might not be able to have the funds. That’s okay. Cause you know, you’ve got you’ve had a stroke and all these, you know, your work has dried up and all that kind of stuff. We get it. But then how can we kind of bring people into the fold to do their

the protocol or to have the idea about the protocol without attending, flying across the country, across the planet, et cetera.

Dr Hedaya (40:31)
Yeah, yeah,

across the planet. So I actually encourage people to find a doctor nearby and I can train them. I can consult with the doctor. The patient would have to come to me initially live in person so I can actually lay my eyes on them and do my evaluation so I know what’s going on. And then I can work.

through their clinician, if their clinician is open-minded, and they consult with me as needed and I can give my recommendations. If they want to learn how to use the laser or the neurofeedback, I can train them. It’s an investment. It just isn’t an investment. There’s no way around that on their part. Well worth it if you ask me because I’m able to help people that I could never, never have, this kid I was telling about, could never have helped him. The woman who,

whose husband got connected us, you know, never could have helped her, you know, it just wouldn’t have worked. So I’m happy to teach this. I’ve put out feelers. I’m sad to say that.

Most physicians are just algorithmic thinkers. There are a few that aren’t. And I teach at the Institute for Functional Medicine. And so I’m open. Anybody who wants their clinician, who has an open-minded clinician, I’m happy to guide them and train them.

Bill Gasiamis (42:05)
Yeah. I like about that. The functional kind of medicine world t seems to be a little more lateral thinking. They’re less

Dr Hedaya (42:16)
Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (42:16)
likely to just go after the same bloods, the same protocol for everybody, everybody’s the same, nobody’s the same. Like I I love that

Dr Hedaya (42:22)
Right. Right.

Bill Gasiamis (42:23)
and that’s why I also consult with a what we call in in Australia a naturopath. and just find that it’s more tailored

To me. And as far as the investment goes, people are already investing in their bodies. They’re investing whether they’re smoking, whether they’re drinking sodas, whether they’re eating processed food, they’re paying money and they’re getting some kind of a outcome for that. Like it’s a result. And if you shift that, if you think about like how do I invest in my brain being healthier and I’m a smoker, well, invest in doing the opposite of smoking. There’s don’t smoke. Put that money

Dr Hedaya (43:03)
Thank you.

Bill Gasiamis (43:04)
into something else, for example, or

not alcohol, et cetera. So it’s like it’s I I I talk I wanna I don’t want to talk about the price, but I wanna kind of shift people’s idea of the investment part of it. yeah, it’s expensive. Well so is not being able to work for the next thirty years. but then it’s still

Dr Hedaya (43:24)
You know, that’s…

Bill Gasiamis (43:25)
important to bring people into the fold who don’t have the means at the moment, you know?

Dr Hedaya (43:30)
But I like your reframe because if you ignore your health, you’re going to pay the price in dollars and quality of life and all the other ways. You will pay for that. You’ll pay for it one way or another. There’s no free ticket in this world. And the best medicine, as we know, is prevention. So if you’re young, maybe you have a family history, even genetics that might

make you think you might be vulnerable well. Exercise, straighten up your diet, get on top of it when you’re young. Develop those habits. Hang around with people who are also health conscious. Very important because it’s very hard to do on your own when everyone around you is smoking and drinking and eating. Very hard, very hard. It’s not impossible.

Bill Gasiamis (44:24)
And

even if you’ve already had a stroke and you’re kind of on the path to recovery, maybe it’s a good idea to make that shift also to avoid another one and to avoid

Dr Hedaya (44:35)
No.

Bill Gasiamis (44:36)
the next illness, whether it’s a heart issue or cancer or whatever it is. And the mindset should still be the same, whether you’re young or old, or whether you’ve had a stroke or not, it should all about be all about preventing the next thing so that you have as much time

Dr Hedaya (44:53)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (44:54)
To improve your current situation and live a really fulfilling and happy and healthy life. And then find purpose, find meaning, and you know, also be a good example to the people around you that don’t have a choice who they hang out with, like your children. you don’t want to be that bad influence to your children, even though you know, they didn’t choose, they can’t move out at 12.

and go live somewhere else and they won’t they won’t know any better and they’ll they’ll

Dr Hedaya (45:25)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (45:25)
mimic and they’ll do what we do.

Dr Hedaya (45:30)
You know, you’re reminding me of a story of this woman who came, she came with a stroke and she was depressed and I’m not gonna get better and I’m hopeless and she’s talking about this and I said to her, this is, I think really came from God, not from me. I looked at her, I never said anything like this in my 47 years. I looked at her, I said, you have exactly the wrong attitude. And she was like, stopped.

And she got it because you don’t you don’t win the battle By being hopeless you win the battle by saying I’m gonna die trying I’m gonna I’m gonna beat this thing. I’m gonna beat it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take I don’t know what turns in the road. I’m gonna take I don’t know what the path is gonna be. I am gonna make this my vocation I’m gonna do this. Of course, you’re gonna have down days, etc. Etc, know, you’re a human being but that’s the attitude and she did it she changed her attitude

Bill Gasiamis (46:30)
That’s a beautiful note to end this episode on. Look, thank you so much for joining me for the four episodes that we’ve done. This is the final one. I really appreciate your insights, your knowledge, your willingness to share information that people haven’t heard about before. Where can people go to find out a little bit more about you and and connect with you if they choose to?

Dr Hedaya (46:49)
So we have a website, it’s called Whole Psychiatry, like Whole Foods, I don’t know if you guys have Whole Foods where you are. I heard they have one on Mars now. They’re everywhere. So Whole, Whole, Whole,

Bill Gasiamis (47:01)
Yeah. Yeah, good effort getting to Mars.

Dr Hedaya (47:05)
wholepsychiatry.com. We have a lot of resources, videos, et cetera, on the website, it’s a lot of information. And then there’s a contact form if they’re interested in a consultation or.

educational consult or being a patient, there are different paths that they can take.

Bill Gasiamis (47:26)
Thanks so much for joining us.

Dr Hedaya (47:28)
My pleasure, Bill. Thank you for the opportunity.

Bill Gasiamis (47:30)
That’s our fourth and final conversation with Dr. Robert Hedaya. The idea that I’m taking away is that healthy isn’t a property of a food or a supplement. It’s a relationship between that thing and your baseline. Remember to test before you add anything. The research behind the copper, chocolate, and avocado points is linked in the show notes. Remember, copper leaches more into acidic drinks and

Studies tell you what’s possible, not what’s in your blood. Test first, then decide. To connect with Dr. Hedaya visit wholepsychiatry.com where there’s a contact form for consultations. He sees new patients in person first and he’s open to guiding a local clinician. To revisit the series, listed to episode 404 on photobiomodulation and laser therapy.

Episode 413 on hormones and thyroid and episode 417 on mold, mercury, and lime. For the hyperbaric oxygen research behind Hylain, listen to my conversation with Professor Shea Efrati. All the links are in the show notes. Share this episode with one person who’s rebuilding after a stroke. It could change how they approach their recovery. My book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened.

Is a path to post traumatic growth after stroke drawing on the work of Tedeski and Calhoun. Find that at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And remember to support the show financially if you can at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.. Support starts at around six dollars a month. Until next time, this is Bill Gasiamis and you’ve been listening to Recovery After Stroke.

 

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