The
Endocrinology of
Traumatic Brain Injury
The Practitioner's Guide to the Missing Link
in the Care and Rehabilitation
of the TBI Patient
Table of Contents
1. The Epidemiology of Traumatic Brain Injuries
2. Signs and Symptoms and Long-Term Consequences of Traumatic Brain Injuries
3. "Traditional" Diagnosis and Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injuries
4. Hormone Homeostasis Post Traumatic Brain Injury
5. Hormonal Sufficiencies, Insufficiencies, and Deficiencies Post Traumatic Brain Injury
6. The Laboratory of Traumatic Brain Injury
7. Hormone Balancing Strategies in Traumatic Brain Injury
8. Case Studies
WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK
On January 11, 2016, a retired marine Lance Corporeal J.P. wandered into my office. Only forty-five years old, he looked worn and haggard. He had noticed the "shrinkwrap" covering the windows of our building describing our practice. I study hormones.
A decidedly strange sight, J.P. stated he had no head or body hair and hadn't shaved in twenty years. The victim of a Jeep rollover accident in the Gulf War, circa 1991, J.P. complained of perpetual coldness, thirst, abdominal pain, dry skin with rashes, weight gain, unremitting fatigue, apathy, alienation of family, unable to concentrate, new-onset anti-social behaviors, he began shoplifting because he could, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and hopelessness.
Homeless at the time of our encounter, he frequented our local V.A. hospital where he was treated with a cocktail of thirteen medications totaling thirty-four doses per day. Two suicide attempts and a foray into anti-social (shoplifting) behavior in the two years prior to our meeting was enough warning for J.P. to seek other venues.
I can't even get that right," he said.
On a personal note, my medical practice went "hormonal" in 2009 after a string of my own physical and spiritual setbacks. Graduating from the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine's Metabolic/Regenerative Medicine program, our practice looks at chronic disease issues through a "hormone-centric" lens.
J.P.'s issues resonated loud and clear. Apathy, anxiety, depression, poor muscle tone, no hair? That's a testosterone deficiency. Dry skin, dry hair, weight gain, fatigue=thyroid deficiency. Alienation of family, anti-social behaviors, poor concentration = growth hormone.
I explained this to J.P. taking him through the range of hormonal excesses and deficiency symptoms.
We sent J.P. to the V.A. with a lab slip for hormone levels. You can guess their reaction.
Jackpot! Of the 10 hormones we measured seven were below "normal" levels, and testosterone which should be in the 500-900 range was severely low at 162. Three, growth hormone, pregnenolone, the hormone of memory, and prolactin, very low in chronic TBI patients, barely registered. His cortisol, the stress hormone, was high, as were his autoimmune factors, indicating his body viewed his own organs as "foreign" and were to be rejected.
Surely, the V.A. would be as excited as I was and want to fix things yesterday. Eh, no. J.P. received a letter from his primary care physician.
Was I just called a deplorable?
Undeterred, we jumped in full bore. Big mistake. Our first effort right out of the box taught us an important lesson. We'd swung for the fences and missed. It seems our bodies, especially after a prolonged period of depletion, doesn't take kindly to sudden surges in hormone input. J.P. suffered from all sorts of "side" effects, rashes, high blood pressure, swelling of his hands and feet, worsening memory loss, palpitations, agitation, and insomnia. He seemed worse than ever.
It's good to find a mentor. And in our field, mentors become eventually friends and colleagues. After our initial debacle, I found a like-minded soul in San Diego, California. Dr. Mark Gordon's Millenium Health Group was several years experienced ahead of my studies. Studying Dr. G's protocols, we abandoned our "hero, fix everything yesterday" complex and began with just a tiny amount of hormone replacement and Vitamin D. Not much changed at first. Within 2 weeks we bumped up the doses slightly. Two weeks later we increased our doses again. At four weeks on the new regimen, we were only at about half-strength.
Gradually J.P. began to improve. At eight weeks, he reported sleeping through the night for the first time in six years. At twelve weeks, he sprouted peach fuzz on his chin. Four months after starting therapy, J.P. proudly announced he had taken a job, his first in almost ten years. At eight months, J.P. reached out to his family from whom he'd been estranged.
J.P. and his Dad "Pete on Thnaksgiving Day 2018. They'd been estranged for ten years.
IJ.P.'s raison d'etre now was/is two fold.
1. Raise awareness that traumatic brain injury does not have to be a lifelong "death" sentence and
2. Teach others how he recovered via hormone evaluation and balancing.
My goal with this E-Book is to introduce the concepts of hypopituitarism and hormonal insufficiencies and deficiencies as a major causes of the ten most common symptoms of post-traumatic brain injury:
1. Fatigue ( 100% of patients )
2. Excessive sleepiness +/- disturbed sleep patterns.
3. Inattention with difficulty concentrating
4. Impaired memory
5. Faulty judgment with slowed thinking.
6. Depression w/wo Anxiety and Panic Attacks.
7. Irritability with emotional outbursts of Anger.
8. Diminished libido.
9. Difficulty switching between two tasks.
10. Alcohol Abuse w/wo Drugs.
If you're a practitioner, you have in your hand's the blueprint we used to help J.P. and at this writing two hundred and seventy-four other traumatic brain injury patients, recover.
f you, or a loved one, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and mull thoughts such as "I'll never be the same," or "my life, as I knew it is over," read this book. Find a healer willing to look at our program. We are the missing link to get you over the "hump" and onto the road to recovery.
THERE ARE 3 THINGS TO FOCUS ON:
SET GOALS
Set short-term (one, three, and five-month) and long-term (six months, one year, two years) goals.
Use the included MPQ evaluation to track your progress. Reevaluate and revise your goals every six months.
ESTABLISH A ROUTINE
Establish a routine-A consistent daily routine helps the body recover. Rise at the same time every day. Retire at the same time every day. Adopt a balanced, Paleo or Keto-style gluten-free diet along with a stretching and cardio-friendly exercise program.
We recommend High-Intensity Interval Training along with old-time favorites from the 1980s. You can easily find these on You Tube:
8 Minute Abs
8 Minute Legs
8 Minute Arms
8 Minute Buns
Do two sets in the morning on rising and two sets in the early evening. Do the aerobic training when you have the time
FIND A MENTOR
Find a Mentor-If you are a practitioner, new to the world of hormone balance and hormone therapy, this book is but a first step in your understanding of the nuances of recovery from head injury. We recommend you take our complete "Introduction to Bioidentical Hormone" online video course. You can get more information here
For a deeper dive specifically into Traumatic Brain Injury, we offer a complete video course devoted to TBI:
https://drclearfield.samcart.com/products/the-endocrinology-of-traumatic-brain-injury0owlsWrite your text here
Think for a Moment
You suffered a head injury years ago.
Nothing in your world has been the same.
You're tired despite 12 hours of sleep per night.
You're down in the dumps all the time.
You've been drinking and can't hold a job.
You take 3 medications for depression.
You take 2 medications for anxiety.
You take 4 medications to undo the side effects of the first 5.
You've been to the Neurologist, Neurosurgeon, Endocrine Person
You've been to an Iridologist, Chiropractor, Faith Healer
Maybe you went to an Intuitive
You (or your patients) are told:
"This is as good as it gets.
There is nothing more that can be done."
But is that true?
Is there a Missing Link?
Hormones Affect Behavior
Where are the majority of our hormones formed?
(Hint)
IN MY BOOK, YOU WILL LEARN:
The Traditional Approach to TBI Recovery
The Seven Major
and
Three Minor Hormones
and their
Affects on Mood, Energy and Behavior
The Missing Link
and
Why if You Ignore It
A Full Recovery is Almost Always Out of Reach
How to Diagnose
and
Treat
Hormone Insufficiencies and Hormone Deficiencies Associated
with Traumatic Brain Injury
SO WHAT TO DO NEXT?
Open Your Mind!
Do Not Succumb to "Hormonophobia"
Hormonophobia is defined as
Dominant ideas, such as 'testosterone causes prostate cancer,' taught since 1941, from a single report on one (1) patient, take hold and is difficult to break.
(Studies done since 1995 by Morganteler and others treating men with prostate cancer with testosterone showed no progression of cancer after three years of ongoing therapy.)
A look at 46 randomly selected testosterone trials revealed benefits to patients versus harm to be 46-0.
(Morganteler, et al. 2011)
Yet we, and most physicians and patients believe, because we heard it in the media, that testosterone is "harmful."
In 2002, the WHI declared "Estrogen causes Breast Cancer." (WHI, 2002) If you are headline-driven, this is all you heard. In 2013, Manson, et al (JAMA 2013, 310:1353) report a 21% REDUCTION in breast cancer risk utilizing the same data as the original study. You didn't hear that on CNN.
What about the FDA? Didn't they put a warning label on testosterone potentially causing cardiovascular issues? Yes. What was the evidence? Two weakly reported studies that got a lot of press in 2013 and 2014 were ultimately shown to be frauds. The fraud part never got to the New York Times or CBS Nightly News.
So is it "evidence-based, or media-based" medicine we are practicing. Physicians don't have the time to read and digest articles and rely on "trusted" sources. After all, if it is published it is true. Correct?
Remember, the media has a bias towards "the new, the sensational, and the negative." All of the negativity that came from the hype around testosterone in late 2013 and 2014 was so much w"who shot John.". Yet we still believe it as true. A story coming out of left field taking an opposite tack from thirty (30) years of study, such as the benefits of testosterone in cardiovascular health, is thrown to the wind when a highly publicized, yet poorly designed paper makes it to the nightly news.
I graduated from the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Des Moines, Iowa in 1978. I have dedicated my life to finding the truth and acting accordingly. If along the way, we discover that which we believe to be false, we change course.
But, if we find that which we know true to be labeled as false, we speak out.
If you are a patient, find a practitioner well versed in hormone balancing. If you are a practitioner, restoring your patient's hormones to their median physiologic levels produces more dramatic positive results than any dozen antidepressants, antianxiety agents, or even cognitive therapies.
Learn the principles. Find a mentor. This book is an excellent introduction. You will change lives.
CLAIM YOUR BOOK NOW. I KNOW YOU WILL THANK ME LATER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. William Clearfield, a graduate of LaSalle College and the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, Des Moines, IA., completed a rotating internship and served as an OB/GYN resident at Metropolitan Hospital, Philadelphia, PA. Certified by the American Board of Family Medicine after completing a Family Practice resident in 1982 at United Health and Hospital Services in Kingston, PA, Dr. Clearfield, is a lead figure in family and integrative medicine. With graduate expertise in areas ranging from Cardiac Rehabilitation (the University of Wisconsin/Lacrosse) to Medical Acupuncture (UCLA, 1991), to Age Management and Non-Surgical Aesthetic Medicine (Fellowship trained and Diplomat status from the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine,) Dr. C is a leading authority on cutting-edge medical advances.
Dr. Clearfield is a prolific and popular author and speaker. He regularly addresses large physician gatherings including the Age Management Medical Group, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, OMED, the American Osteopathic Association’s Scientific Convention, the Nevada Osteopathic Association, and the American Osteopathic Society of Rheumatic Diseases, and the Frequency Stimulation Microcurrent groups.
In 2020 Dr. Bill went international, lecturing virtually at SVYASA University in Bengaluru, India, and the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Annual Global Webinars on Traditional and Alternative Medicine.
Dr. C is featured on Fox Business News with his work on Traumatic Brain Injury, WARD TALK RADIO, Wilkes Barre, Pa. Host, “Ask the Expert,” BLUE RIDGE CABLE, CHANNEL 13, Leighton, Pa. Host, “Coffee Break,” WVIA CHANNEL 44 PUBLIC TELEVISION, Pittston, Pa. “Call the Doctor,” dozens of times since 1988, "MEDICAL MINUTE," medical adviser to news channel WNEP-NEWS CHANNEL 16, Wilkes Barre, Pa., and as a prominent contributor to the "Patient Mystery" series in HEALTHY BEGINNINGS MAGAZINE.
Dr. Clearfield is one of three Nevada representatives to the American Osteopathic Association’s House of Delegates and is the Executive Director of the American Osteopathic Society of Rheumatic Diseases. On Tuesday evenings, 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific time (USA), he hosts the weekly “Tahoe Tuesday Integrative Medicine Educational Webinar” available at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84026683786
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RESULTS NOT GUARANTEED.
William Clearfield, D.O., F.M.N.M., A.B.A.A.R.M, F.A.A.M.A. , D.A.B.M.A.
9550 S. McCarran Blvd., Suite B
Reno, Nevada, 89523
doctrbil9@gmail.com