Dr. Amir Vokshoor: A Brain Surgeon's Guide to the Operating System of Life

17:21Darin Olien:Which goes back to the special forces thing. You can't deal with that stuff. You got life and death happening. Stuff coming at you.

17:28Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, stuff coming at you. So I think I've become more reductionistic in the operating room and more philosophical outside and more human outside. And I think you have to have those gears. And without those gears, something is missing. And my team in the operating room knows that I'm going to stay calm no matter what. And I'm going to ask them to do certain things if something is happening. and they all listen and they all know. We do always do a timeout before surgery and even a moment of mindfulness right before we actually get into action. So they know if it's a critical case.

18:06Darin Olien:You know, something that just hit me as the Olympics are going on right now, visualization is such an important piece because you see some of these. I was watching a video of some of the slalom skiers, and they were in their zone, and they were literally going through the course, right? It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Like they're going through it. And I do this on a somewhat regular basis. If I have a meeting, I kind of go into it. I kind of meet the energy already. And obviously I intend a certain outcome and then at the same time you have to let go. So for you, I love the fact, and that's what sparked the idea, this little mindfulness.

18:48Darin Olien:How much of, do you use that at all, that mindfulness as you're stepping in and how maybe have that mindfulness that seems out there, how, how is that informed?

19:02Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I think the, where, where I, I told you I was like fearful of it in the beginning where I turned it off was.

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22:50Dr. Amir Vokshoor:When you're doing something technical, I don't want you to overthink it or philosophize it. You just need to have extremely good judgment at that moment in surgery. So that is, I would say to mindfulness, is more of a, can I increase the gain of the system? So the nervous system simply has more energy. So it's a balance of, I would say, to steal the Robin Carhart Harris's theory on entropic brain theory. is it's a balance of disorder in your operating system. And if you have those gears, which come from 10 ,000 hours of meditation that I just dabble in, if you have those gears, I feel like we can increase the gain in our system.

23:33Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And then you go into robot mode and do what you need to do. So the mindfulness does not enter how you open the lining of a nerve or something of that sort. It's just to increase the gain of the system and also set a positive intention. Intentionality is a whole other aspect of our nervous system that I really believe in. I try to get my patients to have an intention as they're healing. I try to prepare them. We have this like entire thing we call the brain spa where we help them meditate and decrease their anxiety and set a goal for their healing. So I believe in it, but I want to see more, I would say, cellular evidence and more not just anecdotes, but more cellular evidence.

24:22Dr. Amir Vokshoor:We know that, you know, prayer circles work for cancer survival. Why do they work? Right. So, you know, so there are aspects of our nervous system that remain a little bit mysterious. And I think we will be engaging those. Yeah. Like more and more. But you brought up another really good point about visualization is, you know, there's a funny surf joke that my buddies and I always tell each other that, you know, you think you looked a certain way, but we saw what you exactly look like. So this is to you guys. Yeah. So I may overestimate my surfing with visualization. But in surgery, I think it's more artistic.

25:09Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It's more like you're drawing Cs and Ws and using these tools in the most intricate way to help the structure improve, help take pressure off the nerves, stabilize a part of the spine. And I think there's definitely a huge artistic component to it that I absolutely am enthralled to get better at because I do think, you know, the arts gets a really bad rap in science. And I think there's a lot of hidden abilities in the artistic ability of humans as well. You know, there's evidence about multilinguistic kids becoming better scientists. There's evidence about music. So there's so much that we can now start to really tackle because now that the reductionistic part of our brain is going to be coded into these assistants, maybe we can really concentrate on intuition and empathy and these other parts of our operating system that are not as easily codable or have yet to be deciphered to that level.

26:24Darin Olien:Well, the cool thing is you're, and with your brain spa, it's like you're already creating an avenue where it makes, it's common sense to do it, it seems, from the outside in. But it hasn't. It's still been reduced, right? Yep. You spend 12 hours working on someone's brain, and then you don't even know them or you don't have follow. Good luck. You know, that was it.

26:54Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That was that was that was exactly what what prompted it. You know, I felt like after incision was healing, we're just like, OK, you know, best of luck with your brain tumor. And we haven't gotten to know the person. We you know, we're we're supposed to be the experts of the nervous system. Why wouldn't we follow them for two years and make sure their operating system is really actually healing? And how does it heal? How does the brain actually heal? It's fascinating. So I have a lot of theories, but it has a lot more to do with the immune system and the gut and how the spinal fluid is processing toxins.

27:33Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And it's obviously blood flow and nutritional apparatus that we are feeding on a daily basis have a lot to do with it.

27:41Darin Olien:Yeah, and that's why it's so refreshing to just not only have talked to you about you're already creating new systems, but then acknowledging the neuro components of the gut and the manufacturing capability of good bacteria. and it's so complicated and yet it's always an orchestration which is kind of weird to me that we've that the American Medical Association decided to kind of cut off all of that other stuff and keep reducing it right you know it's like how the hell did we get there when thousands of years even though it had its issues with a broken leg or getting shot or whatever. But that holism is starting to come back.

28:35Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It was not emphasized at all. Right. Yeah. It was not emphasized. But, you know, if you look at a medical student who's stressing about an exam, what do they do? They're having caffeinated beverages to keep their brain going so they can learn more. So you learn very early that glucose and caffeine are essential. And so it's like, okay, like, you know, no one taught us about this. We're doctors. We just know the body. So everyone becomes their own energy manager. Right. You know, everyone's like, oh, I do that in the morning and I do that at noon. And, and, but ultimately it's the body's energy that I think, you know, now that we have this huge scientific amount of evidence, we should absolutely decipher it for people.

29:16Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And it's, it's not the old, you know, old picture behind the Cheerios box, which as milk and orange juice, you know, the big American breakfast, which I loved seeing actually that that was a great marketing campaign. I loved seeing that as a kid and be like, oh, yes, that's

29:33Darin Olien:captured. Yeah, captured. Captured.

29:36Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And the Wonder Bread and you know that. So you know, so I think we're learning and we should be honest about our mistakes and keep going forward. And I think the sifting through the fog has become my favorite new subject matter. You post a lot of very valuable things about nutrition, and each one of them has, if you go through and find other posts about each ingredient, it's like a very controversial school you get online about what are the benefits and which form should it come in and the liposomal effect versus not. And And there's a lot that I would love the AMA and their experts that are not as trusted, unfortunately, now to really dig into.

30:23Darin Olien:Well, I was talking to a doctor the other day, and he goes, I can look at 10 people with Parkinson's, and they all got there completely differently. It may be manifesting the same way, but if you get, say, 100 ,000 data points, they're all coming from infinitely different places of expressions and DNA and habits and nutrition. But yet, at a certain point, they're starting to manifest certain things. So how do we back up and go? Because it also goes, well, if you blanket one way of dealing with things, that doesn't necessarily mean the root cause is taken care of as that person expressed. Very well put.

31:07Darin Olien:Right?

31:08Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That's precisely what happened with Alzheimer's research. Everybody got, you know, this track of how do I get tenure? How do I get more funding for my research? How do I stay with the NIH grants? So billions of dollars were spent on this very specific hypothesis of amyloid, beta amyloid. And my father was a victim of a lot of medications that didn't work and only gave him side effects. And we're at the top of the food chain in healthcare. We're spending the most amount of money. We have the best research machine, and we're failing. So that was another one of those that I was like, okay. Okay. So just like you said about Parkinson's, how come some diseases have a final common pathway?

31:51Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah. So Alzheimer's is very, very similar to that. Certain forms of traumatic brain injury, concussions, even things like depression, severe depression, and even chronic pain. Chronic pain is a brain disease that steals your personhood. Yeah. So all those I found had a final common pathway. Very similar to what you just mentioned about Parkinson's. Yeah.

32:16Darin Olien:I had 2025, I had a career ending football injury and managed it for 30 years. Right. And then last year, nothing was working. I was on my, on my back for two months. Yeah. Talked to Dr. Barbara. I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm tapped. Okay. There's very few people doing controlled stem cell stuff. So I I went to Dr. Christopher Rogers in San Diego under the FDA's right to try. We did some stuff. But PRP, first off, in the specific areas, took me off of a lot of pain just by that alone and then went back with the stem cells, and it did a lot. Wow. And I was around stem cells. Weirdly, I was around stem cells for the last 20 years.

33:07Darin Olien:Yes. So I was watching in my own vantage point. God, this is the Wild West, right? Do you know what type? Yeah, it was MSCs. Okay, from you. Yeah, so he did lipoaspiration of my own. And then the FDA, it took them two months to curate. Culture them, yeah. Culture and test. Wow. Now they're banked. Wow. so I can also use them in other situations. That's very novel. That's very novel. In the United States. Yep. Because they're following very conservatively, we're following the right.

33:45Dr. Amir Vokshoor:They have to be. And, you know, we have a research protocol right now with what we call exosomes that we're just formulating. They're not whole stem cells, but they're the active components of stem cells. We're excited about it to apply it in spine pain issues. So for discogenic pain, for facetogenic pain. you should talk to

34:05Darin Olien:Dr. Christopher I've had him on here

34:10Dr. Amir Vokshoor:I did see that

34:12Darin Olien:he doesn't over promise he's not a influencing doctor that's real science

34:19Dr. Amir Vokshoor:real science is not trying to convince you to buy anything this is what we see

34:25Darin Olien:so it's exciting from that it's still the wild west stuff and people get in trouble and people get hurt and that's still happening and people are paying$100 ,000 for something that doesn't do anything. And there's a lot of cool things going on.

34:40Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Was yours intravenous or applied into the... No, it's specific. Yeah. Okay.

34:47Darin Olien:So systemically, they're not quite there yet from an FDA perspective. Got it.

34:52Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That's how people go to outside the country to get this. Right.

34:55Darin Olien:Some well-known doctors actually got hurt who were getting treated themselves. And there's some behind the scenes, some bad stuff happening. But also people are getting relief. So it's exciting. Yes. It just needs to have data, data, data, data, data.

35:13Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But I guess the person who injected you was a spine specialist. Yeah. Yeah, had to be a spine specialist.

35:18Darin Olien:Absolutely. Yeah. So you too will have a lot to talk about. Yeah, that's wonderful. And he's getting some great. I mean, I'm one of 100 people that have had it in the States.

35:28Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Because the way we're doing it now is we're getting the bone marrow aspirate from the hip. And then right there in the operating room doing a spin. And then it's PRP and very concentrated stem cells. And I put those in. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's cool.

35:43Darin Olien:And the way he was talking about it, too.

35:44Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But that's why you're so fit. You got a liposuction.

35:46Darin Olien:Yeah, yeah, exactly. It just, because they don't need much.

35:50Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And I was like, I don't want a liposuction, you know.

35:53Darin Olien:But the lipoaspiration, they just put a bunch of water in. They actually make you fatter. And then they take a little bit out. And then, you know, that little bit. It's funny because you love Dr. Rogers too. He goes, hey, do you want to talk to your cells before I put them in? And he was joking, but he wasn't at the same time. So I go over. We were just at a funny moment because I go over to my little stem cells. I'm like, hey, guys, seal team six, baby. Let's do this. It's go time, go time. But I couldn't sit here and talk to you. Oh, wow. Because my pain, going back to the pain, which is why I brought it up, I was out.

36:34Darin Olien:The last podcast I did before that, I was literally sweating trying to talk to somebody. And then I had to jump in a car. That's how gnarly. That's what I see every day. Okay, everybody. Are you ready to upgrade your operating system? I know I am. I'm always game to do that. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That's what we're doing over at Super Life Patreon. This isn't just behind the scenes membership. It's a global experiment in conscious living that I am connected to, committed with in every cell of my body. Each week, you'll get exclusive access to deeper podcast conversations, extended interviews, voice notes from the road of me personally, personal reflections, behind-the-scenes footage, community wellness challenges, and even surprise drop-ins that I no longer do on social media because I don't really dig it anymore.

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38:23Dr. Amir Vokshoor:So it's somebody that, you know, I replace discs in the lumbar and cervical spine at least once a week. And I'm very excited about the regenerative potential of the body through stem cells and exosomes and MSCs. So, yeah, I think that's going to be a huge game changer that I'm looking forward to.

38:40Darin Olien:And the photobiomodulations making some great progress.

38:46Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I think that plus, you know, frequencies and red light and sauna. So you have to have an entire protocol around this. But I'm still impressed because sometimes the disc is so degenerated, The mechanics are so bad that you still need an actual shock absorber replacement.

39:07Darin Olien:So let's talk about that a little bit, just because I hope I never have to have it happen. But it's come a long way, right? Oh, yeah. It's a game changer now. I mean, it used to be I knew friends growing up. It's like they're fused their whole damn spine, right? And it's like that's their life now. Exactly. Wow. Exactly.

39:27Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That's intense. Exactly.

39:29Darin Olien:So explain a little bit about, because there's, I mean, how many people have back pain?

39:35Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It's one of the most, I mean, it's the most disabling diagnosis in the world. It's the most disabling thing that makes you not be able to do anything that you want to be doing. Because, you know, if your arm is broken, you put it in a brace, you use your other arm, and you do things in a funny fashion. If your spine is not functioning, you have to lay down. You can't get out of bed. Totally. And sometimes even that hurts. So, yeah, so I feel like it's one of those things where if you have a, you know, a doctor that looks at you as a whole person, which is your psychology, your physiology, and your anatomy, and your anatomy tends to be correctable with something that's not a 10-level fusion, but a one to two-level motion preserving option, which means it maintains your flexibility, that's a superior option.

40:28Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And that's why we, you know, in our practice, fusion has become like an F word. But it's still needed in a, you know, in severe cases of what we call kyphosis, like hunchback or scoliosis, where the spine is really deformed. It's still needed in those cases and does magical, you know, it still gets someone out of bed. But this whole concept of making a beautiful titanium train track out of your spine, I think is leaving our culture in the next decade or so. And with the advent of new artificial discs, new artificial facet joints, which didn't used to be possible at all. So there's 66 joints in the back of your spine that are all talking to each other, talking to your muscles, talking to your brain to give you horizontal gaze, to give you posture and really the strength.

41:21Dr. Amir Vokshoor:We live in a very kind of youth-driven society, without a good spine, you cannot do anything. You can't stay fit. You can't even stay upright. So I think that the possibility of us being able to replace your facet joints or disc as just like a hip replacement or a knee replacement is a game changer.

41:45Darin Olien:So that's merging pretty quickly then. Is it catching up too? Because hip replacements are...

41:51Dr. Amir Vokshoor:We have research protocols right now for both facet and disc replacements simultaneously, which is extremely unique. It's really unique to us right now. We have a few other guys around the country and around the world that are working at that level. But separately, if you have bad discs, they can be replaced. If you have bad facet joints, they can be replaced. If you have bad both, you don't qualify for any of the FDA on-label solutions. So you have to go into this research protocol and say, no, I want my entire spinal motion segment replaced.

42:25Darin Olien:Which is then, how is that paid? And that's a whole other can of worms. Yeah.

42:32Dr. Amir Vokshoor:We're doing it through our nonprofit research organization. We have talked to sponsors that are a little bit weary because no one wants to be looking like they're promoting something that is off-label to the FDA. So these companies are justifiably, you know, we love what you're doing, keep going, but we're looking for fellowship grants and things of that sort to be able to keep this machine going. But it's very tough.

43:00Darin Olien:Yeah, let's bring, I want to introduce you to Dr. Barbara too. Wonderful. Because she's just a Swiss Army knife in this area. Incredible. She can just do a lot of things.

43:10Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I mean, with the funding cuts, it's a very interesting, pivotal moment for a lot of academic and semi-academic solutions like ours. Because we're not university-affiliated. We're completely an unbiased, independent research organization. Our entire advisory board are experts of what we call the grander nervous system. Someone is a skin expert. Someone is a gut expert. and other person is a nanotechnology expert. So they're just advisors that are volunteering their time to have this conversation about how it all really comes together. Wow.

43:49Darin Olien:Yeah. It's incredible. It's unique.

43:51Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It's a privilege to have founded it after my father got Alzheimer's, but I was like, you know what? I just want to expand this conversation to a level that hasn't been seen before and not operate in silos and not just worry about, oh, what if my funding gets cut next year? I mean, then this happens.

44:07Darin Olien:The weird competition with all of that. And that's where the wall, I mean, it's also bred inside of the system. So it takes a bit of work to break out of the system. But at the same time, you know, doctors also have bills to pay. They have their, you know, loans to pay back. It's like it's a tough thing. It's a balancing act for sure.

44:31Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And so you can't do it all for free. and you do have to have some structure that pays the bills, that keeps the lights on. And so far, knock on wood, we've been able to do it with sponsorship here, a gala here, things of that sort. We have great researchers. We have a UCLA chapter that was started by one of our interns that spent a week with us and said, I want this to be an undergraduate chapter. So now we have quite a few research assistants that are just undergrads that are just interested in this concept of a grander nervous system. God, that's so awesome. It's a privilege, truly.

45:06Darin Olien:If that's happening, you've got to think it's starting to proliferate because it's like, listen, you can only look at this certain broken parts of it siloed for so long.

45:20Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Exactly. You know? Exactly. It's still tough, but it's happening. It's happening.

45:26Darin Olien:Well, it's a legacy thing. It's been going on for a long time.

45:30Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, neurologists don't want to talk to psychiatrists, don't want to talk to neurosurgeons, don't want to talk to psychologists or holistic practitioners. And I'm like, why not? Why don't we all sit in a room and talk about it? Because everyone has a perspective of looking at the same truth, but from their lens.

45:48Darin Olien:Yeah. You know, there was a moment when we were filming a second season of Down to Earth, this show, and we're literally in the Great Barrier Reef on a research platform out in the sea. I love that. And it was like a fly on the wall moment where we did have the cameras, but we had all of these scientists looking at the challenges of the Great Barrier Reef. But they also had equal amount of aboriginal people that grew up on these areas. And the scientist literally to my face said, we have advanced so much of our science based on having conversations with them because they had insight and angles that we could have never known.

46:33Darin Olien:So our science absolutely jumped up tenfold as a result of working with the Aboriginal people. And I was I got chills. And that was a perfect microcosm of collaboration. Because if you collaborate, you have a lot more inputs. And that's science. If you have more inputs, you have more data points. Like even though, okay, I don't fully understand how this is happening, but okay, that's shared in the ecosystem, then we all advance rather than implosion, rather than isolation. It's critical.

47:12Dr. Amir Vokshoor:critical, difficult to apply to humans, to the systems that we've created. We like pyramids. We like kings. We tend to look for those, especially in times of strife. We want strong decision makers that overpower everyone else with their voice. And in a true scientific community, that should not happen. But it happens because they're humans. And it's happened since the 1600s. I mean, Galileo was jailed. So I do think that we're in one of those incredibly awesome nexus moments for science. And if we can balance the egos and actually start the conversation, great things are going to happen. Let's talk about that for a little bit.

48:04Darin Olien:Like your current philosophical view, because there is this toggle. I also come up to it in my own. When do you let go? When do you push on a knowing? And is that knowing easily slip into the ego push? Like, how do you balance the effectiveness? We have to have the ego to operate. It's a primary operating system to work in this world. And at the same time, surrender, let go, receive information. Like it's a constant. Huge balancing act.

48:44Dr. Amir Vokshoor:You know, my line of work, I look at what ego is important for. It creates trust. It creates a communication of competence, leadership, achievement. And it's clear. And it also, you know, it creates a hierarchy. So, you know, people know, you know, who they're getting in a relationship with, you know, especially doctor patient relationship. So from that standpoint, I've had to embrace my ego. But it's a hell of a balancing act still. And I think unless you have tools that make you let go and realize that, you know, you're only here for a tiny little journey. And what do you want your legacy to be?

49:31Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Do you want to really do some good, leave a positive impact on this place? I think it really breaks down that ego. And then you realize that you're privileged to play in that arena. So just play your part in that arena. Contribute. Contribute. You know, be a positive force for the good. And then also realize that the entire construct needs loosening for you to completely let go. Right. In the brain spot, we have a saying, we call it room zero versus room one. So between zero and one, you are increasing order in your operating system. And zero is when your default mode network is completely let go and not ruminating.

50:18Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And it's very loosely associated with your sense of like, oh, yeah, I am this person. And at one, you're fully ordered and you're, you know, like SEAL Team 6, you know, going in for a very focused mission. And both are important. And what I find fascinating is we have meditations that train both. We have, like, you know, focused attention and things of that sort versus Vipassana or just nonjudgmental awareness. So I'm very interested in this concept of zero to one as a way of training my mind better to handle ego better. Because it's a toxic friend. Right. And it easily can unravel your equipment.

51:07Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Give it too much food, man. Yeah.

51:09Darin Olien:Yeah.

51:10Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Exactly.

51:12Darin Olien:Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, not that I thought I was going to take it here, but, you know, psychedelics have come into this to turn off that default mode network. And, man, that's really good. But also you have to integrate.

51:27Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Instead of 10 ,000 hours of meditation, you can have eight minutes of DMT and you're there.

51:33Darin Olien:Shut up that switch. Oh, that's who I am. Yeah.

51:37Dr. Amir Vokshoor:So I feel like the trap we get into with psychedelics is you realize how powerful they are, and then you don't do the hard work. But I've heard you talk about this many times. It's the step-by-step of the hard work that really benefits the entire operating system, the entire planet, entire society. So I feel like if they're abused as a tool, then we're going to do exactly what we did in the 60s, which is to lose an opportunity. Right. So we're very involved with our partner organization, Mystic Health, to try to create the correct set and settings at the brain spa to do those correctly for our patients suffering from chronic pain, trauma, dementia, depression.

52:20Darin Olien:What are some of those protocols that you have?

52:22Dr. Amir Vokshoor:I mean, right now, the legal one is ketamine. So the other ones are all research, you know, pure research. Yeah. And right now, the only protocol we're using is low-dose ketamine, which can be intranasal or intramuscular. It's very powerful. And I've seen incredible transformations. Some of my patients, very dear patients, that had severe spinal pain have benefited from it. People that lost everything in the fires and were dealing with multiple other situations have benefited from it. So I've seen it be a great corridor, but not as a party drug, as something where you truly engage the laboratory of your mind and truly open some doors, unlock some things, unlock some old crud or deconstructs.

53:14Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And so from that standpoint, I'm very excited about that as well.

53:18Darin Olien:And that can have to do with the psychosomatic pain elements. Oh, 100%.

53:24Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Right? Yeah, there's centralization of pain. Yeah. That's why I say chronic pain becomes a brain problem. It's not as much the structure anymore. So unless you address both, you've just created a beautiful x-ray with a miserable patient. So unless you can recognize that as a clinician, especially in spine, you won't have long-term sustainable benefit.

53:47Darin Olien:Yeah, because it's an interesting thing. chronic pain is a destructive, almost, you become so shut down that even when you come out of it, depending on how long you're in it, but you come out of it, but you're timid. Right. Right. So there's fear. And now there's this overarching fear element. There's avoidance of certain movements.

54:17Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Right. There's so many interesting things that happen, including habituation. Yeah. So you've already created a lot of bad habits, and then some of that becomes centralized. Right. So yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's its own sort of monster that's adjacent to the structural problem that got you there in the first place. So it's really important to kind of take an inventory of your body during either breath work or relaxation and try to see if your body is capable of doing more after a spine surgery or something of that sort. And I encourage that.

54:54Darin Olien:Huge. And visualization too. Visualization. What are your goals? Right. What do you want? Visualize.

55:02Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And how do you perform an exorcism of this thing that's in your head? And unfortunately, in some of the younger patients, and this is truly a psychological arena that I'm not an expert of, it becomes part of the pillars of their entire personhood. That's a tough one. Then you're looking at, okay, if we completely take this away, we could be doing something harmful to this person. And doctors like to name things. So there are people that have gotten diagnoses since they were 13 of just name after name after name after name to just pacify that there may be a part of their psychological architecture that comes from some chronic pain or trauma or childhood trauma that unfortunately then manifests itself as either a spinal condition or other condition, and then they latch on to that.

55:56Darin Olien:Yeah, chicken before the egg, egg before the chicken. You don't know where it comes from. And then identity around that too. It's like, well, okay, I've had this all. It must be who I am. and now it's like wow you have yeah compounding effect exactly i'm broken i heard another doctor say the other day he goes i've never seen and he's getting all this is a whole nother conversation we don't have time to get into it but um yeah it's like a hundred uh hundred thousand to a million data points. Wow. I'll tell you about it, um, off air, but, uh, he goes, I've, what was that? What was my point? Um, he said, I've never seen.

56:41Darin Olien:Yeah. Uh, fuck. Oh yeah. So I've, I've never seen the same pathway to some of those, some similar like Parkinson's. I've never seen the same pathway. way so as these things are maybe manifested as this identifying point you don't know how it necessarily got there and and then that can be its own site oh this is my main thing he goes i never saw the body make a mistake in its um expression so if it was pain expression i love it was he goes I've never seen it. He goes I've been able to track the to the best of his ability root cause root cause root cause. Wow. It's always perfect in its expression.

57:34Darin Olien:I'm like yeah wow that is.

57:37Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That makes sense to me but it's controversial especially in my world. Yeah of course. Yeah.

57:42Darin Olien:So So what was the origin of it? Was it in the womb? Was there some epigenetic something? Wow. But if you take that on for a nanosecond, what if going almost also philosophically, what if there was no mistakes in all of this universe? Right. Right? In our lives and our bodies, what if there was always, is maybe we don't have all of the mechanisms to understand it.

58:13Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Right.

58:14Darin Olien:But maybe the only way I'm a victim is how I orient. Perceive it. Perceive it. So what if it goes into that whole thing, life's not happening to me, it's happening for me.

58:28Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Indeed. That's very powerful.

58:31Darin Olien:You know, I think about that from a brain standpoint,

58:35Dr. Amir Vokshoor:and it's fascinating. How so? So I've been writing a book about thinking.

58:40Darin Olien:Oh, you have?

58:40Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, because I got the idea when my kids, my daughter was born, and I was trying to buy her this book called Everyone Poops. Right. Everyone Poops. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, you know, everybody thinks. Everybody also thinks. And so first it was a children's book. Then it became like a whole philosophical, autobiographical thing. thing and it's like now it's like 40 ,000 words that I have to finally organize. But the point of it was just like your liver does a certain thing, your kidney does a certain thing, there's no mistakes. There's always some manifestation of what the organ's supposed to do.

59:22Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And the brain's byproduct instead of poop is thoughts and feelings and emotions. What's interesting about it It is also our entire journey. We connect with our surroundings through thoughts and feelings and emotions. So in a way, the byproduct of the brain is what gives us personhood. You know, it's a literal definition of us. So that's what was fascinating. And I was looking at it as it doesn't have a choice but to think and to feel and to emote and to. So almost like a biological process. So that's when you get into like, well, can I have more regular bowel movements? So you take a stool softener or you do stuff like that.

1:00:08Dr. Amir Vokshoor:So what do we do for our thoughts? What are the gears we have for the cadence of our thoughts and our emotions? Kind of thoughts. Kind of thoughts, the ones that are of service to you as opposed to sabotaging you. and you know i don't think there's a give there's a lot of scientific evidence behind it other than self-help books and people like you that are trying to get people to think differently so and i you know i i want to be part of that movement that says you know let's engage thoughts as early on as possible and let's give human beings more gears i had this guy and i'm this is really cool by the way i love that because it's like if we taught kids that thoughts are maybe i'd love to get your

1:00:59Darin Olien:point of view thoughts are thoughts are they you right right right or are you receiving some data or some from your environment and it kind of comes in like a radio like if I'm on 97.3 I'm getting a certain bandwidth of radio signals if I'm 103.2 I'm not hearing that anymore I'm hearing this but it's literally all happening and then some person grew up in the same house I'm thinking differently than you are.

1:01:36Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah. How the hell is that?

1:01:37Darin Olien:They got hip hop. They got the hip hop station.

1:01:40Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Completely different.

1:01:41Darin Olien:So going far out there. Yeah. Where do you think thoughts, feelings, emotions come from?

1:01:47Dr. Amir Vokshoor:You know, I think so. You have this incredible, you know, like trillions of synapses that are processing information. And if you don't give them information, you know, if you're not in the woods looking at the trees and all the richness that planet Earth is feeding you, then it makes its own story. So the brain needs content. You know, that's why we're doom scrolling at 2 a.m. because it's addictive. It gives you dopamine. So the brain needs content because that's how it creates its access to dopamine and access to joy. So it's trying to give you access to joy, but it falters when it gets into a habitual cycle of rumination, obviously negative thinking, you know, doom scrolling.

1:02:40Dr. Amir Vokshoor:So it's almost like unless you just pause and check on it once in a while, it could habituate and spin out of control a little bit. And not serve you. And not serve you. So if you think about the ability of psychedelics or deep meditation or even deep prayer is to try to create a blank slate, a blank library, and say, you know what? Put these beautiful books back in there, but just put the beautiful ones back in there. And that's why mantras work. That's why religious sermons have such a powerful and interesting effect on our nervous system. Because belief is the pillar. Right. The pillar of your nervous system is whether you believe.

1:03:29Darin Olien:And what you repeat.

1:03:30Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And what you repeat. And then that becomes you because that becomes your habits and what you do on a daily basis. Then there's all the feedback loops of your body saying, okay, this is what you are and this is what you do. And it's constantly trying to reinforce that.

1:03:44Darin Olien:So it's almost like we're just two people who have repeated whatever we've repeated to have us sit here right now.

1:03:51Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Exactly. We're here repeating everything that we have come to this moment for.

1:03:58Darin Olien:And then one could say, well, is that repeating, driving you towards your ultimate dream-ish? Or is it manifesting in not so great things? And then you get into like, is it quantum mechanics that's also happening? Is there magnetic pull? Is there frequency? Like there's a lot.

1:04:18Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That's one of the most fascinating things actually. and I have a question for our technical guys, Elon, if you're watching. I definitely want input on this because there's a lot of people saying— Elon or others. Or others, yeah. I mean, the Neuralink crew is filled with very bright minds. So for anyone who's listening—

1:04:40Darin Olien:Yeah, I'd love to say your point.

1:04:42Dr. Amir Vokshoor:I'm very curious about whether our nervous system actually is fed by the geomagnetic frequency of planet Earth, which is the Schumann resonance of 7.98. Grounding. Yeah, and it has to do with our alpha frequencies between alpha and theta. So I wonder if we're going to be extraterrestrial, you know, as you guys want us to be at some point. Is that going to interfere with the way our nervous system operates? And if it does, what do we do to, you know, reproduce that? Because there's something so special. Just like you said, there are no mistakes. You know where there are no mistakes? In the life-giving capacity of planet Earth.

1:05:34Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It is astounding how it does what it does and photosynthesis and the temperature control and the fact that our proteins don't denature on a, you know, combust on a second to second basis because it's so perfectly fine tuned. So there is this magical DJ called the universe that is doing, and you can call it God. I'm totally cool with that. Definitely, I believe in that higher intelligence that is absolutely fine-tuning this beautiful environment for us that we're playing in and destroying somewhat and being careless about. And I just feel like we should take a little pause and get to know our own operating system of its strengths and benefits and its crud.

1:06:30Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah. It's impossible.

1:06:32Darin Olien:How it is that we can just be somewhat conscious beings having this conversation, talking about this omnipresent kind of system that's doing a trillion micro adjustments every nanosecond of every second of day. And like it's it's it's mind boggling.

1:06:58Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, literally. Literally.

1:07:00Darin Olien:Just going circling back, I'd love, I've never looked into it. I kind of have a version. I'm averse to jumping to putting stuff in my head. Right. other than doing, I'm always like, well, what are the foundational things that we can start to nurture before we jump steps? Right. There's a lot of, you know, peptides, TRT, all you can name a bunch of stuff where I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of things you can do before you jump steps. Neuralink. Yeah.

1:07:35Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Have you looked into it?

1:07:36Darin Olien:Have you looked into the mechanisms? What are the pluses? What are the minuses? I've never thought about it. Actually, Pun intended. Yeah, exactly.

1:07:46Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I know. I feel like the easiest justification is we have patients that are paralyzed. Right. And with the help of a Neuralink, they can engage in a world in a way that they never could. Yeah. So that's a real thing.

1:08:02Darin Olien:That's a real thing. Yeah.

1:08:04Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That's real. We've seen there's like three to five patients now. I know for a fact about three, but there's been more. And, yeah, we actually have a colleague of mine who's a neurosurgeon, and I've met the engineering crew. And I actually met Elon as well, but that was for Tesla a long time ago and totally by accident. But there are some great people doing great work at Neuralink, and I think it will be foolish to just say, oh, it's a scary brain chip. Right. Clearly, brain chips are scary because they can, you know, read thoughts and it's a whole other level of privacy that, you know, we need to do.

1:08:46Dr. Amir Vokshoor:We need to engage and talk about it. You know, who owns your thoughts and are you going to give permission, you know, for your thoughts to be, you know, read? So that's one aspect. But things like, you know, curing blindness and curing paralysis, or at least not curing it, but making those participants, research participants, patients, clients, be able to engage in the world in a way that's never been done before, I'm completely on board. And I think the fact that what they've figured out, which is still like a huge, I would say, mechanical challenge from an engineering standpoint. The magic of Neuralink has been to insert something so delicately that the brain's immunologic mechanism doesn't say, why are you hurting me?

1:09:35Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It just says, hmm, curious, and it shares information with it.

1:09:40Darin Olien:Yeah, it doesn't trigger it. Doesn't trigger it.

1:09:42Dr. Amir Vokshoor:So that's how fine that operation needs to be. And that's why it is robotic. That part of it is actually robotic. The easy part is the robot can't do. And that's what's fascinating about that robot. The easy part, which is to drill a hole and make sure that the area that we're going in is sort of safe, you know, just eyeballing the area. You know, that it cannot do. But the most hardest part, which is to deliver these beautiful hair-like extensions into the brain, it does better than any human. So I do think an augmented neurosurgeon in the future would be a better neurosurgeon. I don't agree with Elon when he says surgeons are going to be out of business in three years.

1:10:29Darin Olien:Right. That's what he says, three years.

1:10:31Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, three years, because there's more robots doing most basic moves. We'll see. Game on. Yeah.

1:10:39Darin Olien:Yeah. But that said, it's only one part of it. And we have so much more going on. And I believe that, you know, using tools for the tool's sake of bettering these situations for people. And I mean, those are the use of tools is everything.

1:10:58Dr. Amir Vokshoor:BCI is here to stay. Brain-Computer Interfaces. And Neuralink is just one company that's doing that. There's about two or three other ones that are incredible, and they are solving some of the most unsolvable things. Spinal cord injury, blindness, you know, certain psychiatric disorders will definitely benefit from that in the future. Wow.

1:11:19Darin Olien:Yeah. What excites you the most right now, personally, professionally?

1:11:24Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I want—I am still very humanistic. My, you know, my privilege and awe is the human nervous system. Yeah. I still want to see my children grow up as human as humanly possible and enjoy the ocean and enjoy the stars and look at Jupiter and just be inspired. And so I want to promote that we need to get back to being as awe-inspired by our planet as humanly possible and be empathetic and be compassionate to each other and realize what we've done to each other as a species, We realize what we've done to the planet as a sort of automatons that are only driven by fear and greed. And certainly, you know, I understand that there's a lot bigger challenges ahead of us.

1:12:13Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But if we have that somewhere in our gearbox, we can develop this access to joy. We can actually traverse this next very challenging and very telling phase of human evolution successfully with the machines and still have a beautiful planet to enjoy.

1:12:35Darin Olien:Yeah, because we've carried on for a long time without the full assessment of the negative side effects of, say, a decision, which of course increases profits for certain people or corporations.

1:12:53Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But even those people want their children's children's children to have access to a clean ocean and have access to a beautiful rainforest. So I think that's where I think the conversation needs to go. So like, you know.

1:13:06Darin Olien:New systems approach.

1:13:07Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, and also scientists that differ need to still be made to talk to each other. Right. Even if they want to shout at each other.

1:13:14Darin Olien:Yeah.

1:13:15Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Like, let's have it out. Let's have it out about vaccines. Let's have it out about climate change. Let's have it out about, you know, whether Neuralink is ethically good or not. Like, let's engage each other.

1:13:26Darin Olien:Put it on the table. Put it on the table, and maybe it'll be a shouting match. But I think the thing that freaks people out is if they don't know something and they're there as a society, if we feel like I'm not being told everything. Right. Then conspiratorial, your brain goes into all kind of catastrophe models as opposed to like, hey, man, we know that we're having some issues on the planet and air, water, food, shelter, poverty. Right. How about we work together with current systems and move in a better direction?

1:14:07Dr. Amir Vokshoor:There's always going to be nefarious situations. There's always going to be evil in the world. That's for sure. But I do believe that every human being has a decision to decide what microcosm are they going to live in in their inner space and their outer space. and the inner space first because that's where the mindset comes in and that's where you say, I'm not just going to be another monkey part of the system that they've created for me, so I go down this algorithmic bias of misinformation as opposed to that algorithmic bias of misinformation because they're both misinformed but in a completely opposite way, so human beings are manipulatable that way.

1:14:49Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, polarity. Yeah, create polarity, create differences, create conflict over superficial stuff, so the deep state sort of can do its thing.

1:14:58Darin Olien:And one could argue the brain's being hijacked right underneath you. 100%.

1:15:03Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And that's where engaging thoughts really matters.

1:15:06Darin Olien:So as a neurosurgeon, what do we do to break the cycle of algorithmic bias?

1:15:12Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, I feel like the rebellious thing would be to just throw the phone against the wall really hard. I don't advise that. One, two, three.

1:15:26Darin Olien:All together, a million of us, then a billion. And Elon's atmospheric satellites are no longer needed.

1:15:36Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Exactly. But I also think the technology is bringing us closer together in many ways that we couldn't do. I can keep in touch with classmates from high school. I know I can see their kids. And so, you know, I feel like we need to decide, number one, are we going to have ethics and morals that align with our values and actually talk about them and not just have this anonymous internet trolling because you feel a certain way? There's always going to be humor, but the fact that it's become so commonplace to just be the lowest common denominator is, you know, it's just not carrying us anywhere good.

1:16:24Dr. Amir Vokshoor:No, no.

1:16:25Darin Olien:Yeah. And it's void of the empathy and the compassion and the joy and everything.

1:16:29Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah, because, you know, I think ultimately we all love humor, but put yourself in the shoe of someone who is hurt by all this. think of the the kid that has leukemia that needs good scientific information flowing so he can get the best care so i feel like that needs to be part of the conversation so i'm i'm a jokester as much as anyone else but think about the people that you could be hurting and be human about it yeah

1:17:00Darin Olien:well we lose nuance yeah it's like as you look at anything there's all these nuances to the point where if you say Neuralink is all bad. Exactly. And then you go, okay, well, you've met many good people who are wanting to put their skills to good use in the world. And every corporation, big and small, also have those people fighting the good fight within the organizations. And that's where the polarity and the algorithms don't let those nuanced conversations happen, which then creates more polarity, more divisiveness, and ultimately more unhappiness for everybody. Exactly.

1:17:42Dr. Amir Vokshoor:I think one of the coolest things about Olympics, for example, is people are competing for a goal in the most, even though they're harsh competitors, they're the most cutting-edge humans, they understand a deeper mission of Olympics. I feel like capitalistic incentive needs to be the same way, kind of like the X Prize, you know, like, hey, how do you write a solution for hunger in this part of the world? And if the people who hold the power of these massive tech companies also have a wing that says, you know what, I do want to solve paralysis. I do want to solve this particular disease. I do want to research Alzheimer's.

1:18:26Dr. Amir Vokshoor:The DeepMind guys, I mean, they put out the code of protein folding open.

1:18:37Darin Olien:Open source it.

1:18:39Dr. Amir Vokshoor:You know, instead of selling it to each company that was dying to create a particular drug for a disease, they said, use it all. So that's a great example of amazing things coming from technology.

1:18:52Darin Olien:And if people get worried about IP or stuff, but you can also blockchain it. You can make sure that, hey, we're sharing in a way that's collaborative, but it's linked to that was your idea from your research. You know, there's ways to do it.

1:19:09Dr. Amir Vokshoor:That definitely gets nuanced, and I don't claim to be an expert on that. And I know, you know, like we can talk a lot of kumbaya and everyone should come together. but it ultimately comes to some either smart attorneys or smart engineers figuring out the incentive part of it. What I'm saying is can we better incentivize humans for the good of the planet, for health, for all of us?

1:19:35Darin Olien:Well, we've heard it from you, the neuroscientist. Awesome, man. Hey, such a pleasure, man. Thank you so much.

1:19:43Dr. Amir Vokshoor:It's been an honor and a pleasure. and you're an original human being, which is now my favorite thing to tell people. I've witnessed a lot of operating systems. I know which mold each person comes from. Like, oh, yeah, that's that mold and that's that mold. Think of like a typical actor, a typical attorney. Archetypes. Yeah, yeah. And I love meeting like original human beings and say, oh, this person is unique. They're kind of forging their own new path through the forest. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah. I love that.

1:20:20Darin Olien:Yeah. Thank you, brother.

1:20:21Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Of course. Yeah. You know, if you ever need like an MRI review or something like that, like I'm.

1:20:26Darin Olien:I have several.

1:20:28Dr. Amir Vokshoor:Yeah. Happy to look at it. Seriously. I'll give you my cell phone. I mean, you have my cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to look at it. It's my like, it's become my passion because I feel like we write our diary in our spine. Oh, man. I really do. Yeah. It's like the anatomic and physiological diary.

1:20:49Darin Olien:Honestly, the pain led me down to some original pain. Yeah. Birth trauma. Yeah. 1970. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. Wow. I literally was like, I was tapped. I was like trying everything I could because I don't take drugs. I don't take any of that stuff to numb me out necessarily. So I was like, but I was like, I'm laying on my back on where have I felt this pain? What am I actually feeling? I'm feeling vulnerable. I'm feeling scared. I'm feeling inadequate. I'm feeling all of these things. And I kind of non-psychedelically kind of ventured into like, oh, I was born two months premature. I was four pounds, zero contact from mom, shoved in an incubator, feeling vulnerable, scared, my nervous system.

1:21:44Darin Olien:It's like my nervous system knew that feeling. Even though it was expressing itself through a different type of pain, my nervous system was remembering the original pain I came in with. And so it's unlocked all of this stuff. And so as I've been unlocking that, I was then, you know, as you know, it's not just the thing. It's like I have to physically do what I need to do. So, okay, I opened the door. I got some stem cell, you know, so it's not either or sometimes it's and so it's, it's, it's amazing what these doors can be and, you know, back pain and like carrying the doors. Yeah.

1:22:24Dr. Amir Vokshoor:The doors I like, I call those in my practice. I used to call those corridors of susceptibility. Yeah. And some people respond to certain things really easily, like acupuncture or some other unlocking than others. And we don't know why. We have no idea why. Another great thing that needs to be solved by science.

1:22:42Darin Olien:Yeah, because you can see some point, oh, I did this therapy and it changed my life. And like, well, it didn't change everyone's life. But then someone did something else and like... 100%. I get a text from a patient every day about a new peptide that changed their life.

1:22:58Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But 10 days later, it's like the pain came back.

1:23:01Darin Olien:Right.

1:23:01Dr. Amir Vokshoor:And I don't know if that was placebo or it was a peptide.

1:23:04Darin Olien:Right. Well, there's so much hype about it. It's hard to know. And placebos, you go back.

1:23:10Dr. Amir Vokshoor:But there's some positivity coming from it as well. Definitely.

1:23:13Darin Olien:It's a little Wild West and dangerous too.

1:23:16Dr. Amir Vokshoor:GLPs, I saw that you were talking about those. Those are very powerful. Very powerful. Used in the right way. 100%. It may affect dementia. It may affect a lot of things. That's incredible. Very excited about that as well. All right. Amazing, brother. So we need to do this again. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Wow.