The Neil Haley Show Featuring Dr. Larry Carr, Geoff Dardia, and Dr. Gilda Carle

The Neil Haley Show Featuring Dr. Larry Carr, Geoff Dardia, and Dr. Gilda Carle

Neil opened with Million Dollar Minutes alongside Ryan Aguas, welcoming Dr. Larry Carr, BYU Hall of Fame linebacker turned brain-health researcher and adjunct professor in the University of Utah's neurology department. Larry shared his journey from playing football starting at age 10 through a successful BYU career and Canadian pro stint, only to spiral into severe depression, paranoia, and suicidal thoughts in his fifties due to undiagnosed CTE. After the top researchers at Boston University told him there was no treatment, he was referred to Dr. Margaret Naeser at the Boston VA, who was studying photobiomodulation light therapy in Gulf War vets. The treatment using an early Vielight device transformed his life, saving his marriage and giving him a mission to save football players.Dr. Carr detailed the landmark BYU football study he led, the only one of its kind, where players using the active Vielight headset showed zero inflammation or axonal damage at season's end while the sham group showed widespread brain damage. The treated group also achieved an 83 percent win rate over three seasons compared to 58 percent without it. He stressed that the issue is not concussions but head acceleration events, the constant rattling of the brain inside the skull, which affects football players, women's soccer players, race car drivers, rodeo bull riders, and even firefighters and combat veterans. His research has expanded to firefighters in Las Vegas and an FDA-funded TBI study, with hopes to launch the largest NFL retired-player study and youth mental health research, since CTE precursors are showing up in 20-year-olds. Learn more at vielight.com or footballandthebrain.com.Geoff Dardia, retired Green Beret and founding director of the SOF Health Initiatives Program at Task Force Dagger Special Operations Foundation, shared his 20-plus year journey of running into health challenges that led him to become one of the special operations community's leading wellness advocates. Geoff explained operator syndrome, the cumulative impact of traumatic brain injury, blast over-pressure, toxic exposures, chronic and traumatic stress, adverse childhood experiences, insomnia, and infectious diseases that drives the staggering cancer and suicide rates in special operations. He emphasized that suicides typically occur within a year of separation, and that the system needs to intervene before the catastrophe rather than after.Geoff described his own healing journey through advanced diagnostic testing at the Cleveland Clinic, functional medicine, and ultimately the stellate ganglion block (Synthetic Reset) at Reset Medical and Wellness Center, where he went as he transitioned out of the military. He praised the center's setting, safety, ceremonial follow-through, and family-based approach that addresses the operator, the spouse, and the children. He stressed that the reset is a starting line, not a finish line, providing the nervous system regulation needed to do the hard reprocessing work afterward. Visit taskforcedagger.org and theresetcenter.com.The show closed with the Gilda Gram Podcast featuring Dr. Gilda Carle. She walked through the eight behaviors author Anna Phillips Waller identifies in women who were never taught to love themselves growing up: deflecting compliments, excessive self-criticism over minor mistakes, negative self-talk, tying self-worth to external compliments or appearance, prioritizing others' comfort while neglecting their own needs, gravitating toward critical or emotionally unavailable partners, feeling guilty about self-care, and apologizing excessively for taking up space. Dr. Gilda referenced her book Real Men Don't Go Woke, which details how men hide from intimacy, and reminded listeners that hiding is a two-way street since partners mirror each other. She closed by encouraging women to walk into every room with a "capital I,"...