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We've got a great program for you today.
I think you're going to find this pretty interesting.
It's that time of year when it's easy to get down the blues, depressed.
And we're going to talk about something called blue light therapy that I think if you have
any of those general symptoms you'll find interesting.
But its impact on making life better for veterans.
I found fascinating and that's why I talked to these smart people about it.
And we're also going to talk about veterans exposure to PFAS chemicals and where that's
going and what that all means.
It's a hot topic, not covered by the general press but certainly by the military and veteran
press.
I think you'll find this interesting.
So sit back and listen.
We want to welcome to veterans radio today Dr. Helen Burgess and Dr. Allison Zolta.
We're going to be talking about some research that's being done that is important for veterans
to know and particularly if they are suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder or some
other issues like depression.
Let me start with Dr. Helen Burgess.
Helen welcome to veterans radio.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for having me here.
She is a professor of psychiatry and you'll might catch a little bit of accents.
She got her PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
She is currently at the University of Michigan Medical Center.
She has had a faculty appointment with Rush University Medical Center previously.
And that is where she met Dr. Allison Zolta.
Allison welcome to veterans radio.
Hi, so happy to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Zolta has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania clinical internship I guess.
So I got my clinical psychology PhD at University of Pennsylvania and then I did my internship
at the VA Colo Alto.
And we'll talk a little bit about that and both of you as I said met up at Rush University
Medical Center.
I had some overlapping research areas which is where you both had some interest in veteran
related health care issues.
Dr. Helen, why don't you talk to us a little bit about why your research has gravitated
into some space that may be of interest to veterans.
Yes, well I think this all started several years ago.
As you mentioned Allison and I were both working at Rush together.
And I was funded through Department of Defense and also NIH to start testing morning light
treatment in veterans with chronic low back pain.
And at the time, and we still are to some extent also interested in the impact of light
on pain.
But as I started to prepare to run the study, I realized that some of the veterans would
come in with some PTSD symptoms, but I really had no idea how to best measure that.
So at that point I reached out to Allison for advice on how we could assess that.
And indeed at the end of the study, we did find a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms.
Now I'm going to make you explain this in fifth grade terms so we veterans can understand
it.
What was, what is morning light?
Yeah, so morning light treatment traditionally has been used to treat winter depression.
So classically people sit in front of a large light box for about an hour or so shortly
after they wake up in the morning.
Some of those light boxes are what we call broad spectrum light.
So they look like bright white light.
But more recently devices that we call wearable light devices have been developed and that
is actually what we used in our recent study.
And they kind of, I guess you could describe them as light glasses.
So you wear them as if they're glasses and they have some LEDs that shine light just
underneath your eyes, into your eyes.
But they're not right in front of your eyes so you can still use your computer, you can
read.
And the nice thing is you do not need to sit in front of the light box for the whole hour.
You can now actually do other things around the house, which we found people really enjoyed
being able to do.
So if you're saying that if I'm wearing these morning light glasses for about an hour a day
at the beginning of the day, it somehow helps lower pain, depression, my post-traumatic stress
disorder symptoms, is that what you're saying?
Yes, and we think there's three different mechanisms by which this might be working.
One is we know morning light treatment helps reduce depression.
And when you reduce depression or depressive symptoms, then things like pain and PTSD symptoms
improve as well.
We also know morning light treatment can help improve sleep.
It's not a huge effect, but there is some improvement in sleep as well.
And there is a connection between sleep and pain.
And we know that sleep is often impaired in association with PTSD as well.
And then the third pathway would be through the circadian system, which is a body clock
in the brain.
And it's driving circadian rhythms in pretty much everything you can think of, both for
our psychological health and physical health.
And often with our regular sleep schedules and kind of crazy modern lifestyles, we tend
to have some circadian disruptions.
So when we start following a regular sleep schedule and we get that morning light, and
light is the strongest environmental signal to the circadian clock, then it's a way of
stabilizing the circadian system.
And that leads to a lot of health benefits across a broad spectrum of areas, including
pain, PTSD.
So yeah, we found morning light treatment to be useful across a broad spectrum of clinical
health disorders.
Very interesting.
Now, Dr. Allison, you are a clinical psychologist, and we were talking earlier about your time
at Rush University Medical Center.
But more specifically, you were the research director at the Center for Veteran and Family
Health, I think it was called, which was funded by the Wounded Warrior Project.
Do I have that basically right?
Yep, that's right.
And as a clinical psychologist, when this doctor of psychiatry came in with this crazy
idea on, hey, maybe morning light is helpful, what was your thinking?
Where did it take you?
Yeah, it's a great question.
Because I will say at first I was a little bit skeptical, and I asked Helen to show me
the data that she had collected on veterans with low back pain.
And I was really surprised to see that for the veterans who had PTSD, they had what we'd
call clinically meaningful improvements.
So they had enough of a symptom reduction that we think it would make a meaningful impact
in their lives.
And I was really surprised to see that and also really excited because my experience working
with veterans has shown that as much as I love psychotherapy, and I think psychotherapy
is incredibly valuable in treating PTSD, we know it's effective.
It's often really hard for veterans to get it.
And so having alternative treatments that people can do in their own homes is just a
really exciting possibility.
And that's what really motivated me to start working with Helen on this project.
And I think you hit on a really important point over the years as we've talked to veterans
with PTSD and talked to various healthcare professionals about ways that this can be
worked on and managed.
Veterans are a very proud group.
First off, to go ask for help or even acknowledge the problem is the challenge we wanted to
get over.
But having to go somewhere every three days a week, set times, some of this becomes so
rigid, there's not a lot of follow through.
So the idea that this might be a therapy that as you said had clinical meaningful reductions
is kind of exciting, isn't it, Dr. Ellison?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's really exciting because we know that we're going to need many different solutions
to tackle the problem of PTSD among veterans.
It's not going to be one thing that's going to kind of address all of the need.
And so the fact that morning light treatment is so accessible to people that they can,
it's commercially available, people can buy their own devices and use them in their own
homes is just really exciting in terms of potentially getting treatment to a lot more
people.
Dr. Helen Burgess, you had mentioned that your research initially was funded by, in
part by DOD.
I'm always curious as to what happens when the funding runs out?
The funder simply just put the report on the shelf and we never hear about it again?
Or talk to us a little bit about how your research and work has been maybe accepted
or expanded upon.
Yeah, so I guess the answer is when the funding runs out, hopefully by that point you've
completed the study, you publish it and then you use that as a launch pad to apply for
more funding is really how the cycle continues.
So that veteran study that Alison, that we worked on together and that, the chronic pain
study, the results, the changes in the PTSD symptoms, the improvements that we saw, Alison
and I then decided to run a small study, internal pilot study, specifically now testing the
morning light treatment in people with significant PTSD symptoms.
And that also showed some really nice results and then we used that study to apply for a
much larger NIH grant and that is what funded the current publication that is out there
in psychiatry research.
But I also want to point out that in science it's really important that results are reproduced
and ideally you have separate independent groups testing things and finding the same
kind of results and we're really excited that there's two other research groups actually
that have now published that morning light treatment can help with PTSD symptoms.
You're absolutely right.
It can't just be a one-off.
It's got to be replicable and to prove up that, hey, this wasn't just a fluke.
It really does work and the size of the study is always important.
So is this a study, Dr. Burgess, that has, are we talking 10 people, 100 people, 1,000
people?
It's sort of medium, I guess.
I think that first study, Alison and I, I think there's only 15 people.
This is closer to 50.
And actually, Alison has taken the lead on, I think just last week, submitting a new
grant application to now start testing this in even a larger sample.
I think the largest sample so far in a single study has been around 70 people.
So we're at the stage where I think we need to start moving into logic clinical trials
of at least 100, maybe even a few hundred people.
Dr. Zolta, as you think about this and other groups are beginning to look at this as well,
can you comment about whether or not you've had any interaction with the VA national about
hey, we're interested, we're going to help, we're going to do more?
What's the, what's the temperature of how VA has looked at this as it might apply to
the patients it treats?
Yeah, I'll say I haven't had direct conversations with folks at the VA.
And at the same time, I will say that the colleagues of mine, certainly that work with
veterans have been interested and excited to try to understand whether we can use this
as an alternative treatment or potentially to help boost the effects of the treatments
that we know work.
So I think there is some excitement as Helen said, we're kind of at the stage where we
need some of those larger trials to feel really very, very confident that this is the way
to go.
And I think once we have that then really trying to disseminate this treatment is going
to be a critical next step.
So much of science and medical research is international.
Has this morning light treatment or therapy, is it being used anywhere else in the world
here, Dr. Helen?
Yeah, yeah, it's used around the world.
Morning light treatment or therapy was first developed, as I mentioned, for winter depression,
or what sometimes we call seasonal effective disorder.
And certainly here in Michigan, we tend to experience higher rates of that than Alice
and maybe experiences in California.
But yes, I think after those initial trials, then most of the work has been done in what
we call non-seasonal depression.
So depression that is sort of year round and doesn't just pick up in the fall and in winter.
And there's now what we call meta-analyses, which are these publications in which they
go around and they combine the results of many, many, many different studies to kind
of help create a sort of global or average effect.
And there's been at least three of those now looking at morning light treatment for non-seasonal
depression and finding medium effect sizes, which means that morning light therapy is
as effective as pharmaceutical antidepressants.
But interestingly, the side effects of morning light therapy are really quite reduced compared
to these pharmacological treatments.
And the most significant one for morning light therapy would be headaches.
And the literature suggests, and it has certainly been, matches what we've experienced in our
trials, is that new headaches can start typically in the first week with the morning light therapy.
And some people say, that's enough for me.
This isn't for me.
And that's, of course, totally fine.
Other people say, well, the literature suggests if I stick it out, these headaches will disappear.
And certainly that is what they experience.
So that is the number one side effect that we've noticed in our studies and fits the
rest of the literature.
But yeah, morning light therapy is used around the world.
Mostly I would say for depression.
The PTSD work, to our knowledge, has really been here within the US.
And we, as I mentioned, have also started to explore it in terms of the area of pain
as well.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.
Is it being used elsewhere for the low back pain, which is kind of where you started?
And did your research on low back pain and morning light therapy result in clinically
meaningful reduction in pain?
Yeah, we did see that with chronic low back pain.
That veteran study, as we described, kind of spun off into the work with Allison, looking
specifically at PTSD.
It was also a second spin off from that study, which was to focus more on people with chronic
pain conditions.
And the one that we really ended up focusing on was fibromyalgia, which is a chronic widespread
pain condition.
And we were funded to run a small pilot study.
And that went quite well.
And then that moved on to a more medium sized study similar to this PTSD study that we've
just published.
And then going back and again requesting for more funding, now we're at the stage where
we've just launched a clinical trial and it will be in 400 people with fibromyalgia.
And it's a fully remote trial, so we're enrolling people across the country.
And yeah, that will be our largest clinical trial to date testing morning light treatment
for a chronic pain condition.
And if people wanted to register for that study, is that something that they could do?
And it's so how?
Yeah, so a really useful resource for people if they're interested in participating in
what we call clinical research studies is you can go to clinicaltrials.gov, which is a website
run by NIH, the National Institutes of Health.
And you can enter in different search terms for different illnesses or studies that are
out there.
And you will find our study is registered there and there's contact information on there.
I guess another website being in Michigan that I would plug is the University of Michigan
also has what we call a research registry where people can sign up again interested
in participating in all kinds of different research.
And the website for that is umhealthresearch.org.
And they already have over about 80,000 people who have signed up on that.
And that is a huge help for all of the researchers at University of Michigan that are trying to
recruit participants for this study.
So certainly if anyone is interested in participating, that is also a great place to register at.
Well, let me back up to something like, because I don't think we've fully explored this.
When I wear my morning light glasses, if that's what I'm wearing, I think you said I wear
them for like an hour a day.
But do I have to do that for the rest of my life?
What's the process here for how long I'm in using the therapy?
And then how long does the results of less pain or less depression or less PTSD symptoms,
can you talk to us about how long that lasts, I suppose?
Yeah.
Now, those are great questions.
In the original Veterans study, we did track people for 30 days after the end of the light
treatment.
And I will say to my surprise, we still found some benefits in mood and pain and sleep 30
days later.
But you raise a really good question, which is, is this the therapy people need to do
every day once they're feeling better?
Can they maybe do it every second day or third day?
And this is exactly one of the questions that Allison is trying to answer in her new grant
submission to help us get a better handle on as this treatment starts to be disseminated
into the real world.
And we're all dealing with all these other things going on in our everyday life.
What should this long-term maintenance treatment start to look like after perhaps an acute treatment
period of every day once people improve?
How can we maintain those benefits without necessarily having to do the treatment every
day?
The answer right now is we just don't know.
But we just don't have any.
I just knew.
I just knew, Dr. Zalta, I'd get to a point where you all said, we just need more research.
And that's what you're going to do.
I will add just to Helen's other prior response that, so different folks have tested different
lengths of treatment.
We've been testing four weeks every day.
So that's been kind of the dose that we've been, we looked at in one of our most recent
trials.
And Helen, I don't know if you can speak to kind of what the range of studies has tested
and why we think four weeks might be a good first try to see how that helps.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's one other study that did six weeks.
We ended up choosing four weeks, and we sort of consistently done that actually in a lot
of our studies.
And that was mostly informed by those meta-analyses I referred to on non-seasonal depression, where
they do show people start improving in the first week, but in studies that had a placebo,
they find that the significant difference between the placebo and morning light therapy
doesn't, on average, doesn't start to emerge until around weeks three and four.
And so that was the reason why we said, okay, we're going to do four weeks.
And so far, that has worked pretty well for us.
Now you said earlier, Dr. Burgess, that this is commercially available equipment, I suppose,
for morning light therapy.
And I guess if I went on my search engine or my favorite shopping site, I could find
somebody promoting some sort of glasses or screen or something for morning light therapy
for seasonal depra—seizful depression.
Yep.
I got the term wrong there, but is there something you should put a asterisk on here
and say, it's this wavelength, it's this type, it's this—because I suspect there's
a lot of hucksters out there.
Yeah, no, that is a good question.
And it turns out that the circadian system is most sensitive to blue wavelengths of light.
So blue light in the morning is great.
We don't love blue light in the evening, which a lot of us get from our cell phones,
because in the evening we're trying to wind down for sleep.
And having a lot of blue light in the evening is making our brains think that it's morning
time, or at least daytime.
But I will say when the light gets bright enough and often light boxes, the intensity
is enough, you wouldn't necessarily see any larger effect compared to the amount of blue
light, for example, versus a really bright white light.
So recommendations would be, you know, some people actually really enjoy sitting in front
of a light box.
And our recommendations there go for something that's quite bright.
The companies will often market themselves as being around 10,000 lux.
They are bright.
They're not 10,000 lux at the level of the eye.
They're 10,000 lux at the level of the box.
But those marketed devices will work.
And we encourage large light boxes, not small ones, because a large light box means you
can move around a little bit in front of it and still get the light.
And it's also going to appear less glary, whereas if you have this smaller focal point
coming from a smaller light box, that sometimes can be a bit more unpleasant.
In terms of the wearable, I think it's fine to mention the device that we've used, because
we have no financial connection with the company at all.
It's actually a company originally coming out of Australia, believe it or not.
And it's called the Retimer Device.
There are other wearable light treatment devices out there, and people should feel free to
take a look at those.
We kind of tested them all on ourselves, and we felt that the Retimer was the most comfortable
one.
And the Retimer company has recently come out with version three.
We use version two, which we like because it has an adjustable nose piece, which just
means if people wear glasses or they have different shaped heads, that there is a way
to move these glasses around a little bit and really look for the perfect fit.
But we always explain to participants in our studies that with the Retimer device, if it's
positioned correctly, you'll essentially see a lot of blue-green light when you look in
the mirror around your eyes, under your eyebrows, almost sort of an oval circle around your
eyes.
And if you see that, then for sure you know that you're getting the light.
So there are a variety of options out there for people.
I think the main devices are available on Amazon, so that's usually a good place to
go and at least take a look.
And people obviously can look at ratings and things and prices, things like that.
Well, this has been an interesting conversation.
And when you kind of explain how it moved from seasonal defective disorder and depression
into the areas that may be of interest and help to veterans, it kind of all makes sense.
But unless you guys tied it together, I would never have thought of it.
And I'm not surprised more research is needed, right, Dr.
Zalta?
Absolutely.
Well, we thank both of you, Dr. Allison Zalta and Dr. Helen Burgess, for spending some time
with Veterans Radio today to explain this interesting research and hopefully a new at-home therapy
that may be helpful to veterans on a number of fronts, from pain to better sleep to PTSD
symptoms.
It's all pretty exciting stuff.
And we look forward to hearing more as your research develops.
Thank you so much for having us.
Thank you very much, Jim.
Yeah.
Well, it certainly is interesting that something that's been around for a while, blue light
therapy, is getting focused on, hey, how can this help veterans?
And maybe more than, you know, most of us, we go through, it's wintertime, it's dark,
it's gray, it's kind of depressing.
Maybe we need to fix our mood with blue light as well.
So hopefully you found that interesting and they're doing more research and we'll find
out, you know, kind of the ways in which it might help veterans improve the quality
of their life.
And you can buy this stuff, these glasses online from any major retailer, e-retailer.
So hopefully that gives you something to look at.
Now after a few messages from sponsors, we're going to be back and we're going to talk about
PFAS.
It's important to know about, it's an area that's kind of developing.
So I think you're going to find the interview very interesting.
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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Brandy Hill.
Dr. Brandy Hill, she is going to talk to us about a subject we've talked about before
on Veterans Radio, and that is Veterans Exposure to PFAS Chemicals, sometimes known as the
Forever Chemicals.
Brandy, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, thank you so much, Jim.
It's a pleasure to be here with you and all of your listeners.
Well, we appreciate the time you're making for us.
We know you're traveling, and getting this in is really timely.
So you have a doctorate in public health, as well as a master's in public health, which
and you've done some writing on the cumulative exposure to PFAS substances impacting veteran
cancer diagnosis, which we'll talk about.
But before we get there, tell us why you're interested in veteran health issues and a
little bit of your background.
Yeah, no worries.
Thank you so much.
So on a 25-year U.S. Air Force veteran I retired back in 2019, the entire time I spent working
in a military medical facility.
So I spent my years there managing teams of individuals who were enabling superior healthcare
for all of the military members, as well as their families.
But after I did my retirement, I decided I wanted to be a health educator.
So off to go work as a health educator I did.
But I left to continue to make a mark and impact specifically on military members.
So my husband and I, we have three wonderful children, 27, 23, and 18.
My oldest son serves in the military, as well as his wife serves in the military, and they
are the parents of my fantastic 18-month-old grandson.
So it's a family concern for us, with my husband's background and my background, and both of
our fathers also serving, both of their fathers serving.
You can see how this extrapolates as a thought process for us to kind of go after.
But during my active duty time, education became a huge priority.
So although I started a slow road to progress, if you will, my pathway was a winery one.
So I originally started out as a logistician in the Air Force, which doesn't seem like
it has any kind of impact to health.
However, I was deploying and doing a whole bunch of humanitarian missions.
And during those humanitarian missions, my job as a logistician was to also act like
a pseudo-pharmacy tech.
So my job was to hand out and deliver pharmaceuticals to the community members that we were serving.
With that, I became interested in pharmacology, so I decided to go after my certified pharmacist.
Pharmacy tech certification.
So once I got that, I started doing some time in the pharmacy and realized that pharmaceuticals
were just a really good way of us to continue to treat symptoms, but maybe not get after
root causes.
So then I decided to head on over to the nutrition world, where I got my bachelor's in nutritional
medicine.
Then I found out nobody really wanted to listen to a dietitian, right?
Yes.
In addition to that, it all really boils down to education.
And the more we know, the more we grow and knowledge is power and iron sharpens iron.
So that's why I went after my MPH and got my master's in public health.
Well, on top of that, I decided what really mattered to me was being able to help educate
others.
And so I wanted to be able to do independent research.
In order to do successful independent research, I needed to get my doctorate.
And so that is why I went after my doctorate public health.
And this kind of leads us up to where I am today.
Well, it's a typical story of somebody who gets started in one road, and then as you
say, it's kind of a windy road where you end up.
Life is rarely a straight line, and we have to embrace all those curves along the way.
So I wanted that outlined because I want our veteran radio listeners to understand that
your interest in this area is personal.
It's with passion.
It's not just some, sometimes we talk to these PhDs, doctors, and it's kind of very
egg-heady.
But there's more here because of your family and life experiences.
But let's start with the basics.
As I said, we've talked about it before, but I'm sure not everybody understands what
PFAS chemicals or forever chemicals are all about.
Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of that?
Surely.
So PFASs or Pyrrhoin polythloral alkali synthesis, that's a whole lot to say.
But they really originated back in the 1950s.
And in the 1960s when they got their first patent, which is fantastic, and they were
really useful for a whole lot of things, such as your normal nonstick cookware.
The item or the spray that you put on furniture to keep it water resistant or soil resistant.
So it's pretty much in everything we touch on an everyday basis.
There's thousands of these chemicals.
The unfortunate part about these chemicals though is they are forever and have been deemed
as the forever chemical because there's really no way to get rid of them.
Interestingly enough, the AFFF, which is the firefighting foam that's so proliferant around
Air Force bases, specifically our military installations that may have JPA or other fuel
fires, that was actually patented in 1966.
And we started using it in petroleum based firefighting in 1970s.
And these are band made chemicals?
They are band made chemicals, yes.
And they don't have a natural breakdown process, if I understand it.
No, that's why they're forever because there's no way for our environment to really just
get rid of them and flush them away.
And so when they do offsluff into other parts of our environment, our water, our soil, there
they stay to contaminate things like the cows that graze on the grass, the water inside
your lake, seep into our water drinking systems.
You just pointed out these have been around now maybe 40, 60, 60 some years maybe in commercial
practice, which in the real world, it really isn't that long.
It's better living through chemicals approach.
They're great when they start and then we use them for two or three or four decades and
then find out, hmm, there are some side effects.
Is that kind of what's going on here?
For sure.
So originally it was like, oh, look at this, it's really awesome.
And then they found out like, oh yeah, hey by the way, this also can cause or has been
linked to cancer, liver, damage, immune system changes, all of these not so wonderful benefits
of this very helpful substance.
But if you go back and do some research, you can find where some of the leading companies
who were making this and distributing it way back in the heyday had some indication that
this was probably not safe for people.
You did the research, that's why we have you on and you wrote, as I say, your dissertation
was cumulative exposure to, and I'm just going to call them PFAS impacting veteran cancer
diagnosis is the title of this.
And you used a particular data set, this 10 year data set to examine these relationships.
Tell us what you were, what you went in thinking and what you kind of came out thinking.
So I went in thinking, you know, I'm surrounded by people in my life who served in various
different ways in the military, and a lot of them, the alarming rate of them have had
some sort of cancer.
And so I wanted to figure out, is there a linkage to perhaps where we are, what we're
doing and what kind of exposures we may have?
And so, anyways, that's what I went in thinking was, can I find a linkage to exposure?
And then what I found out was, there are some very interesting linkages.
So for one, military service members are actually 11% more inclined to have some sort of cancer
diagnosis.
Additionally, it's been noted that with certain different kinds of cancers, it's actually
25 to 40% higher in veterans than it is in the civilian sector.
And so that's why it was so important for me to be able to do this research and kind
of find out what is going on.
Now when I did use, like you said, a publicly available data set, this was not a data set
that was actually given to me by the DOD or it's not specific military information.
It came straight from the NHATES, which is a national representative data set.
I used the years 2005 to 2015 to really kind of underscore, looking at a 10-year area,
what kind of diagnosis is people getting?
And what I found in that was that there was quite the interest.
So you know, cancer alone, there's about 450,000 veterans suffering with diagnosis of cancer.
There's about 50,000 added each year.
So you can tell that that's pretty impressive to get that many people.
Now looking specifically at PFAS, there was 24 DOD drinking water systems with 564 surrounding
areas that actually were a higher level of PFAS than what you're supposed to have according
to the EPA allowable limits.
So that's crazy.
And then looking at another statistic, so there was 12 times higher the PFAS serum concentrations
in US veterans than US population.
So what could that all come from?
You know, you're looking at a higher risk of disease, you're looking at a higher PFAS
serum concentration.
Where is this all boiling down from?
So this is kind of where I was starting to look at.
What I wanted to really find out though was prostate cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease.
These were the ones that I was like specifically looking and doling into.
And I want to stop for a minute because exposure to PFAS in the military can come from all kinds
of different vectors you've mentioned contaminated groundwater, but it's a lot more than just
that, isn't it?
Yes, yes.
So contaminated groundwater, you've got the firefighting foam I had mentioned earlier.
Then you've got to look at all of the different has and solutions that our service members
are actually subjected to.
So those are unique.
Then you top that off with the fact that the average adult only moves 11 times in their
entire life.
Well, a service member is going to change their environment every four to six years.
So this was really interesting.
This is the part when I read your paper, I went, I didn't think about it this way, the
cumulative exposure.
Continue talk to us about that.
So every environment that you impact or that you come across is going to actually impact
your health.
So the Environmental Protection Agency has said environmental hazards, they encompass
our physical, biological, chemical, cultural and social aspects, and all of them can be
associated with adverse outcomes like cancers and cardiovascular disease.
That's straight from the EPA in 2022.
So when you think about the fact that we are changing our locations, we're changing our
environments every four to six years.
And then couple that with for one of the mill, a few handfuls or so deployments for each
person, you've changed your environment so many times.
And in each of those places, you're going to live in a circumstance or a surrounding
area to a base that may or may not have the same situation as the base, you're going to
be moving potentially to a different country that has completely different rules of engagement
when it comes to what you're doing.
And then you throw in the deployment hazards.
So it's very important to look at the environment in a holistic sense.
So not just, oh, well, people lived someplace, but where did you live and how did you live
and how do we really kind of look at that?
How does a private doctor, medical doctor, when looking at a veteran even sort out what
those exposures, cumulative exposures might have been?
And I guess that leads to, is like, there a test for this?
So that is a very, very good question.
And it was one of the questions that I had myself.
So when you're looking at it and you think you go to the doctor, the first thing the
doctor is going to ask you is about your health history.
But they're going to ask specifically about have you smoked, do you drink, has your dad
had the photo, that's a particular issue.
They don't ask you where you've been and what you've been exposed to.
But we know that the environment really adds to your health as a holistic power.
So no, there isn't a way right now for that to be part of it.
But if you go and you research, which I did, and there's a thing it's called precision
medicine and precision medicine is all about really understanding a person as a whole and
not just a sum of symptoms.
So understanding where have you been, what have you been exposed to, you know, what,
not just what your health history is in your family health history, like looking at the
total big picture, because each person is a puzzle and we are all very unique, especially
when it comes to exposures.
So we're talking veteran radio listeners to Dr. Brandy Hill, who has her PhD in public
health.
She studied and wrote on the cumulative exposure of PFASs impacting veteran diagnosis.
And we are not going to ask her about the tools she used, such as Pearson correlations
and multiple linear regression, because I don't even know how to ask those questions
and I wouldn't understand the answers.
But I think it's important for our veteran radio listeners to understand the complexity
of how PFAS exposure may be impacting them.
And I want to use this point to jump in and say, VA has recently announced that it's going
to do more research in the area of linking kidney cancer and exposure to PFASs on military
bases.
And if they make that link, it could be very beneficial for veterans.
If that becomes a presumptive and it's much easier to get VA benefits.
But I want to make the point, it's only kidney cancer they're looking at.
And you just gave me a whole list of things that you looked at.
So is kidney cancer just too small of a universe to be looking at, Dr. Hill?
Well, so you've got to start somewhere, right?
And when it comes to the VA, especially when they're looking at the presumptive, they've
got to start somewhere.
And there is so many things that are listed.
I mean, even testicular cancer is listed as a possible problem, a possible health implication
of PFAS.
And that actually came out like many years ago.
I mean, this was researched on in 2018 by a colleague.
So this information is out there, but you have to start somewhere.
And we're just starting to stretch the surface.
So I think that's really important because if you look at what's really happened over
the last couple of years and look at the past act, they're starting to really go back to
something that was in the military when I first came in back in 1995.
So that's a long, long time ago.
But we had what was called PPIP, which is put prevention and practice.
That was a whole military medical solution set.
And we're starting to go back to that.
We're starting to look at what are the things that impact our health.
And we're scratching the surface to see if we can provide those linkages so that we can
get after our future health.
Because if we can identify things, even if it's just starting with kidney cancer and
then moving on to other cancers such as testicular, prostate, liver damage, thyroid disease, we'll
be able to scratch the surface more and try and hopefully get more and more of these things
connected and get the veterans the care that they deserve.
Yeah.
And you have to bring it.
I agree with you.
You got to start somewhere and you have to bring it to attention of people, including
those private doctors I was mentioning that may not, you know, so few people serve in
the military, so few medical people serve in the military, wouldn't even know how to
ask maybe the right questions.
And even today, I saw an article that came out where out of the University of Southern
California looking at PFAS levels in the blood of young adults, 19 to 24, they found those
in the highest levels of PFAS in their blood had a sleep problem, a sleep deprivation problem,
sleep disorder and we know in the military sleeps like a critical and often interrupted
in a lot of different ways, but you also have to wonder like, hmm, I wonder if any of it's
environmental.
So there's a lot of room for more research, isn't there, Dr. Hill?
Yes, there really is.
And you know, like I said before, we're just starting to scratch the surface into, you
know, these things and the problems that they've caused and how we can get around them.
I mean, if you think about it, like you said earlier, you know, the 1960s really wasn't
that long ago, you know, in the grand scheme of things.
And so we're just now starting to see these implications and being able to really put
together that picture because it takes time, you know, exposure to, to answers, it takes
time and you have to get enough people, unfortunately, to participate in the studies in order to
get the information and really uncover where those connective tissues are.
Because without enough people, you know, like you said, the military members are, it's a
very small amount of the population.
And so we have to get more data.
Well that's answered like a true doctorate in public health and research.
You always need more data.
But again, I think it's great that you can explain this in layman's terms to our veteran
radio listeners.
And I often get to ask those we interview about, you know, their, their experiences in the
military and if they would still recommend to sons and daughters and nieces and nephews
going in the military.
I do this because we have such a recruiting crisis going on.
But you've kind of already answered that.
I take it you were very supportive of your son and his wife being in the military.
Oh, for sure.
Yes.
I'm, I'm a huge supporter of military service.
I think that everybody could really get some valuable lessons, whether it's four years
or 25 years.
You can really learn a lot about yourself.
You can really grow as a person and understand the systems of our country.
I, you know, I couldn't recommend it more.
Additionally, it gives you so much if you give it to the service because I learned a
whole lot of different locations.
I was able to see things from a different point of view.
I really kind of grow my goals and not to mention I got all the way through my master's
degree and never paid for school.
I mean that to me is a huge thing because there's so many people in debt for education.
Yeah, there's great opportunities there and we shouldn't scare people off.
They should really explore it.
And once you get in, as you saw, you don't know where your career is going to take you,
but it may take you somewhere where you're really happy you ended up.
So it's a great opportunity.
Katie Hill, thank you for taking some time to us to explain PFAS and cumulative exposure
and the research that's being going on to make sure we understand how that exposure
is impacting veterans.
Okay, fantastic.
Thank you so much.
And just to kind of give you a preview of what my next study is, not that you may or
may not want to know this, but my next study is again specifically pointing out veterans
because they're again my population of choice.
But I'm going to be looking into Parkinson's and occupational hazards.
Very interesting.
Well, we look forward to when that's done.
Maybe we can talk again.
Sounds great.
Thank you so much, Jim.
And again, thank you so much to your listeners for letting me spend the last couple of minutes
with you.
So a lot of interesting work being done to assist and help veterans with the effect of
combat.
You know, I don't think we quite appreciate what all those impacts are until many years
later.
And that's why you need such a wide array of therapies that will work for some, may not
work for others.
And then there are exposures like with PFAS chemicals.
She's DOD, VA, the world at large is just sort of figuring what all this means and figuring
it out.
And we can't bring you these stories, this information that you need to know with the
assistance of our sponsors, including the National Vietnam Veterans of America, the
VFW, Graph O'Haraup, VFW Post 423, the American Legion, Erwin Presscorn Post 46, and the VVA
H.R.
USS Kettles Chapter 310 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Dale will be back next week with more stories, more information that veterans and family
and friends ought to know about.
It certainly is that time of year where you can get a little depressed.
Don't let that happen.
Reach out to your buddies.
If you know somebody out there who's a little vulnerable, now is the time to call them and
say, hey, did you get through the season?
How you doing?
Springs around the corner.
Keep optimistic.
And I think those are the kind of messages we have to keep telling our brothers and sisters
in arms not to give up.
That's the only way to drive that suicide number down.
I also want to always thank our national sponsors, National Veterans Business Development
Council, NVBDC.org, PuroClean.com, and LegalHelp4Veterns.com.
Very much necessary to keep us on the air.
I'm Jim Fosso and it's been a pleasure to be your host today.
As I said, Dale will be back next time.
You can find out more about us on our website, veteransradio.org.
We have a pretty active Facebook post.
And we post new podcast stories every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern.
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Line us up and subscribe to us as a favorite and stay with us.
And until next time on Veterans Radio, this is Jim Fosso, an officer of the deck signing
out.
And you are dismissed.