This week on Episode 388 of the podcast we have Cavin Balaster, author of the new book How to Feed a Brain. Cavin survived a two story fall, was comatose for 12 days, suffered from a diffuse axonal injury (DAI) and had less than a 10% chance of recovery. Cavin has a very interesting experience of recovery from a severe traumatic brain injury, and has done a great job of digging into info to help his recovery, and is a very inspiring person with a great outlook. Listen in as we chat about TBI’s, recovery, and more.
Download a transcript of this episode here (PDF)
Show Notes:
00:00 – Summary/Pre-Intro
3:15 – Intro and Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
5:50 – Cavin’s background and brain injury
8:30 – Nutrition sparking Cavin’s study
10:58 – Greatest challenges Cavin faced along the way
15:09 – Cavin’s nutrition
17:50 – Increasing Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF)
20:12 – Journaling
21:49 – Supplements
25:47 – Fasting
30:32 – Pfizer stopping hunt for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s drugs
39:46 – Cavin’s advice for TBI
45:43 – Where to find Cavin
Article: Pfizer ends research for new Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s drugs
Websites:
feedabrain.com
Preview of interview series: feedabrain.com/preview
adventuresinbraininjury.com
adventures in brain injury podcast
Book: How to Feed a Brain
Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, iBooks
Excellent podcast! What a great outlook Cavin has on life and you know he is going to change the lives of other people.
My husband has a severe brain injury and we deal with a lot of things because my husband never came back as far as Calvin , we have a book called “Don’t pull that plug” we have used hyperbaric chamber n stem cells ,,, my husband is unable to swallow any thin liquid and chokes freq. and unfourtanatly it sounds mean but there are more medications and diet that can help improve his cognitive function but if I get him to even a slightly higher function he becomes very angry because he then realizes there’s so so much ch he can’t do ☹️ So we have to stay where we are 💕