Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Doc Lounge Podcast. This is a place for candid conversations with the healthcare industry's top physicians, executives and thought leaders.
This podcast is made possible by Pacific Companies, your trusted advisor in physician recruitment.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello, everybody. I'm Stacey Doyle, senior director of marketing at Pacific Companies, and welcome to the Doc Lounge. Today I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Amy Albright, a neuroscience expert, human potential strategist, and CEO of Holon. Dr. Albright works at the intersection of neuroscience, health and leadership, helping physicians and apps enhance performance, build resilience, and prevent burnout in demanding clinical environments. In this episode, we'll discuss what neuroscience teaches us about burnout, mental clarity under pressure, and practical strategies clinicians can apply immediately to support long term wellbeing while continuing to excel in their careers.
So excited to have Amy on today. Welcome to the Doc Lounge podcast.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Amy? No, thank you. I'm great. It's great to be here. I love the idea of supporting the conversation of what it is to be a clinician. I think that we tend to be, as a group of people, overworked and underthinked in a lot of ways and not really have a social support or a strategy. You know, that's not what they teach us in medical school. That's not what they. That's not the focus in a clinical practice.
So I'm, I'm excited to be a part of the conversation.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate that we're definitely trying to build a community here at the Doc Lounge and talk about some of these topics that, yeah, like you're saying, I just think is not as, you know, popular in kind of in clinical settings or even when you're like in schooling. So tell us a little bit, you know, start us off. How did you end up with what you're focusing on now? Obviously you went through medical school. Tell us a little bit about your background.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I was a.
I'm going to actually rewind to probably earlier than most people would imagine. At the age of 18, I had an unplanned, quite, I'll say a spiritual experience that knocked my socks off. Prior to that experience, I was a complete atheist and I was studying neurosciences as an undergraduate with the idea that I would be a researching professor in neurosciences. And I would say that what ended up happening for me is that I realized that there was more than what science could prove.
Right. And it's like, oh, wait a minute, I took science from being my God to allowing for something bigger to be God because I wasn't a Religious person. And I'm still not a religious person, by the way. I use the word God somewhat loosely in that regard.
But I feel like that essentially what ended up happening is I took my very rigorous course of study that I was in and I broadened it, and I've been spending then the last 32 years as now I'm 50, exploring both the depths of what it is to be human, knowing that we can't prove everything with science, but also keeping my footing very deeply inside of science, including neurosciences.
So it was an unexpected plot twist. And I bring that here just because, again, I know that for so many clinicians, especially those that are kind of, of more modern medicines, we're taught to leave that part of ourselves to the side. Right. If we have any sense of. Of that deeper sense of self or life's purpose or whatever, we're not really taught to bring that in clinically. And I understand that, and I think that there's good reason, but it doesn't mean that we have to leave it outside of our own heart space and our own focus. Because really, I feel like what that's done. And so to answer your question now is that I've woven things like really intense neurosciences. Like, we actually have a laboratory here. We're using eeg. We're changing people's brains and how they function in measurable ways, quantifiable, replicable, you know, incredible ways.
And we're doing that also inside of a context where we're taking care of that whole person as a being, not just kind of like the poking and prodding and whatever. And I think it's a really unusual profession. Also, the schooling that I went through is as a doctor of Chinese medicine, which is another really unusual approach, because although we have to learn so much an incredible amount about modern medicine, you know, biochemistry to pathophysiology, or orthopedic neurological evaluation, like you name it, we had to step through it and learn it. But we also learned a very comprehensive medicine that is very, very whole picture to the human, and also how the human is interacting in their environment, and that's how we get our results is through that lens. So it is a really unusual frame to kind of have an emphasis in Chinese medicine, obviously with my doctorate, but also in neurosciences.
And this depth of. Of sense of meaning and purpose, that I feel like that really is the driving force and factor.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's such a. I mean, that's such an impressive and interesting background and blend. And obviously, I think with that, you bring a Unique perspective. And like you're saying you're you, you have a whole career based off of this.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're seeing when you are working with some of your, you know, patients and clinicians.
Just in regarding let's, let's start with burnout because, I mean that was kind of our first topic. What are you seeing and how are you assisting with that?
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Yeah, interestingly, as far as the people in our more in depth programs, we have a large number of MDs that are coming through and a lot of those MDs are going through a deep soul searching in part because of just let's say traditional burnout from overworking and, and being expected to have certain kind of performance. It's actually really, it takes some of the heart out of their practice. Right. It's very difficult to feel like you're doing good work inside of the modern healthcare system. So there's that kind of burnout, there's the heartache of it, there's the overwork of it. Okay. But then a lot of people are also just like really making, they're having bigger questions about where are we headed with medicine and what's really, what do we, what do we really care about here? You know, where are we, how are we taking care of the whole person as kind of the, the field becomes more fragmented and so we do, we see burnout. And burnout is very real. Burnout isn't just like an attitude adjustment that's needed.
We see mitochondrial deficiency and kind of globally maybe represented via what we can see on the eeg. We can see hotspots where people have gone into long term rumination and worries and fixations. It might be about themselves or the world around them. And each of those would look different on their eeg.
We can see exhaustion and fatigue. We can see a decrease in the executive function, which is our function and capacity to make higher order decisions.
You know, we can see people in fight or flight and these are all really high functioning folks. And I think it's really important that we recognize that burnout isn't just a, you know, like I said, it's not just an attitude, but it's actually a neurochemical. There's a neurobiological result, right. That goes beyond maybe we might look at, you know, some like inflammation markers in the bloodstream or something. But that's actually kind of a rudimentary and just one level of understanding of how burning burnout can actually translate into our physiology and how that can really change the outcome of our life, because our brain is not just a computer or just a, you know, like a processor in that regard. It's actually this filter by which we understand what reality is and make decisions. Right. So if it's taxed and worked in the wrong ways, it's not just. It's not like if we have a slightly compromised liver or, you know, our gut health, we have a little leaky gut. Okay, fine. But if our brain isn't working optimally, then then who are we? How do we function? How do we serve our patients? How do we be the parent or the sister, you know, or the community member? Like, our experience of every waking moment of reality is impacted by our neurological health.
It's a huge implication.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Well, and it's fascinating to hear you talk about. Obviously, you can actually see, you know, changes within the brain from a neuroscience perspective.
And obviously these, like, we were talking about, these individuals are performing at a. At a really high level. So these small kind of changes can. Can be, you know, very profound.
So tell us. I know, and this is why I'm so. I'm so happy you're here. And. And, you know, with the work that you're doing at Holon. Tell us. I know. Neurofeedback is a key part of that work. Explain a little bit about that for our, you know, our listeners and really how you're using that to help healthcare professionals and all of your other patients improve their focus and their mental clarity.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. It's so amazing. Neurofeedback therapy has been around since the 1960s, and it's still vastly underutilized and not understood by the general populace, including healthcare providers. So neurofeedback therapy, we're basically using the EEG technology, so the same as we would find in any region, research university, you know, hospital.
But what we do is we use that EEG information not only to get a baseline, like we would for an EEG brain map, but also as continual information that's being fed.
And so we do. We take. We have sensors, we put them onto the scalp. That information that is going on in the brain is being fed over into a computer and analyzed, and then the computer feeds it back to the brain faster than the mind can perceive.
And so basically, it's. It's shaping how the brain is functioning in ways that we can't fully understand cognitively. The interface for that might be if your eyes open, a video game or something on a visual display with an auditory that goes with it.
If you're training with your doing neurofeedback therapy with your eyes open, then the effect of this, it's very, it's, it's almost out of this world to believe you're sitting there, let's say, with your hands in your lap and you're controlling something on the screen by the way that your brain is functioning.
So your brain is actually able to understand how it, where it needs to improve or how it needs to improve its function in real time. Often the feedback loop is at 40 milliseconds between the computer into the brain and then the conscious awareness is much slower than that, which is also a very interesting part of it.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm assuming these are kind of therapy sessions or how do explain more how you would, you know, administer this amount, you know, this amount of care.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: Yeah, so in a lot of settings, in most clinical settings, care would be due, you know, once, maybe twice a week and it would be done in a, you know, you go in kind of like physical therapy or something like that, right. You go in, you get these electrodes stuck to your scalp and you do your training.
And most care providers are focused on pathology just as a note as well. So, you know, everything from schizophrenia to a little bit of ADHD to sleep problems to, you know, the range is actually really profound.
Anything in the, in the realm of cognition or mood can easily be treated. And even sometimes hormonal things can also be looked at with, with how the brain is regulating. So that's a normal setting. And in our setting do something really different. We understand about neuroplasticity and we understand about creating a pattern interrupt. So imagine if you have, if you have a, if, if we're working with the brain that. I'm going to use the analogy of a dog. If you're only training your dog one day a week, is it going to learn a new way of being? Right. It's only on Thursdays at 2 o'. Clock.
I mean, it will, but it's like it might take a lot longer. Right. Versus if you put your pup through like a little bit of a boot camp and you're like, okay, we're going to totally correct this behavior and we're going to spend five days and really spend a lot of time on that. So that's, I'm making it too simple, but it's really, to some extent, it is a great analogy, I think, because essentially we get a massive amount of change in a short period of time by creating an immersion. So we have a lot of different sorts of programs, some of which were a hundred percent Remote. But I think the one that most people find interesting is our on site signature intensive. And that goes from a Thursday to a Monday. And we create that EEG baseline on Thursday as well as do an even deeper dive analysis of what is really going on for them, like in their heart, in their psyche, in their lives. Like what is the thing that they, if we change that, that would change everything. And we benchmark that against the EEG data and then we ask the client, we like to call them in this particular program, what is it that you would like to experience as a different reality? And can we, by looking at all of this data, create a really great roadmap? And, and so we do that. And over the course of three very long days, we do as much neurofeedback therapy as their brain can handle. We kind of liken it to maybe two or three marathons worth.
And what happens with that is that there's a deep pattern interrupt. So it's not just a little bit of a signal. It's like, oh, officially my brain is now being told it's not allowed to go into anxiety and overthinking or that it wants to head towards better memory and cognition or whatever the goals are.
And so we do that in such a way that we actually see really huge change, like one or two standard deviations or however much change we might find in a person with really huge felt differences by the time that they leave on Monday.
So their pre and post data is very, very different, they feel very different. And then that actually grows in over time because we've hit such a window with neuroplasticity, not just with frequency, but also with all the other adjunctive therapies and methodologies that we have here. We actually see the neuroplasticity continue forward and we see positive growth trends in the areas that we have treated for six months, eight months.
So people have a huge, it's a life changing yield by coming.
And I think that it works really incredibly well for people like physicians because they want to have things grounded in science and data and they also are just really motivated. Like you said, when you make even a small change, when you have a big force of nature, it makes a huge difference. But we make huge differences inside of people who have huge bandwidth. So it's really, really remarkable and quite miraculous to see people have less reactivity, better relationships, better sleep, more of a peace and calm, better understanding and clarity about why they're here in a good way. Right? Like, oh, before I was running from and I would reach for a drink or I would try to stress regulate, but actually I just got down to the bottom of my.
The things that maybe were lurking in the shadows that weren't that scary, but I got it handled. And we do that with the neurotech that I was describing. Like I said, other adjunctive technologies, but also a really firm strategy and framework that moves people forward in the way that they think about life, in the way that they navigate and manage and make decisions in their world. And so they have a really huge, huge change.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: That is so inspiring to hear about. And it makes sense when you're talking about breaking a pattern, because when we hear a lot about, you know, kind of physicians or apps are just pushing themselves through exhaustion and it becomes really, they're putting their patients first and kind of everybody else except for themselves.
So if they were to do this intense type of therapy, can that kind of help break those longer term habits of things like that they may have been doing?
[00:16:40] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. I mean, what we don't realize is that we can have massive neurological inefficiencies.
So let's say if you have 15 units of power and seven of them are going towards unresolved PTSD or stress patterns, or, you know, just the, the fatigue and burnout, it's just, it's, it's like you're pouring, you're generating, in this case, energy and it's pouring out through the cracks, right? But if you just shore up those inefficiencies, then suddenly you're doing more, but it feels like less.
I think that's one of the things that I really want for everybody to understand is that a lot of the times, even in the space of personal development, professional development, just our society, it's like, do more, be more, you know, answer more text messages, make sure you're in touch with all your family, be a better physician, whatever your things are. It's like, how can we be more, more, more? But actually we feel depleted, stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, all of those things.
So it's not actually via forcing yourself to do more or forcing yourself via willpower. It's literally changing the way that your brain works. Like the way that you would take your car to the mechanic if it was clunking and almost stalling out at the stop signs, right? You get the car fixed and suddenly the ride is smooth.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Tell us, are there any, you know, obviously the therapy we talked about, are there any strategies that you would recommend? You know, let's say, you know, clinicians in the middle of a really demanding day are There any things that they can do to kind of reset mentally and, and maintain their performance?
[00:18:24] Speaker C: I like to give people 30 second breaks. I think that even highly busy people can have a 30 second break. You know, if you just go and stare out the window and do nothing for 30 seconds, it's kind of amazing what can happen.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: So something as simple as that, it doesn't have to be that you, like, drop into some meditation in the middle of the day or if you have, let's say, 10 to 15 minutes.
I like to recommend for a lot of folks a device that they can use at home called the neurovisor.
It's a photobiomodulation headset and the benefits are extremely wide ranging. So it's basically blinking lights. So if blinking lights are not clinically appropriate, by the way, I'm not giving medical advice on this podcast because I don't know you, but.
But if it's appropriate and it feels good. This neurovisor technology, for instance, is a massive brain reset. And it changes how we feel emotionally, and it also changes how our brain is functioning.
We've just done some pilot studies here, but we've seen a couple of standard deviations of change in those pilot studies in how the brain is functioning. It's a massive, massive difference. And the basis of the technology is to blink lights into the eyes and put sound into the ears.
That resets how the brain is working. Because a lot of the times when we're suffering, it's that we're on a track and we can't get off of that track.
Right. It's just too.
It's habituated. Our brain is pulled back into that and we can't seem to unstick it. So this technology, in somewhere between six and 12 minutes, depending on the setting that one chooses, can reset so that you have that neurological plasticity, that neuro, that neuro flexibility. To be able to choose a different program, you know, choose a different track of reality, it's a massive stress relief. I wake up and I literally feel like I wake up from them. It's like a deep nap. And when I'm back up from it, everything is different. So that's a huge tool that's. That's available for folks if they have, you know, a quiet space to sit.
Yeah.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Oh, love those practical strategies. Okay.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Well, not one that most of us have probably heard about. There's some things that exist that are just so incredible, you know, really powerful, working with breath. I have a practice that I.
If people want to go to the Website, there's a free download. And that practice all by itself, it's a very simple three step process and it requires a little creative imagination. It's kind of a visual guided meditation, felt experience.
But what I've heard people say in their feedback is I don't even know what just happened. I just had such a deep reset, or I've been a meditator for 10 years and I just feel like I had my first real meditation, or I've never been able to meditate and I just actually dropped in and my mind went quiet.
So, you know, that download is a free, available tool for anyone that's listening. And once you learn how to do it, you don't have to listen to the track anymore. You can, but once you learn those steps, they're yours for life.
So I recommend that as something that I've seen as like a foundational element that really changes things for people because a lot of it is that we get stuck inside of this is what is real and this is what is true.
You know, those neurological tracks and we just actually need to be able to shift a bigger frame to be able to feel something pleasant like gratitude or broaden our lens. You know, a lot of the times it's just the shift and then life presents the different options from there.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Amy, what is the website?
We'll obviously share it again at the end and link it out, but let everybody know.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. It's holonexperience.com, h o l o n experience.com and it should pop up right away as an option. You should see it there and I wish you well. And anybody that's listening, if you try it and you have any feedback one way or the other, let me know what you think.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, I want to hear just your thoughts. As we're wrapping up here. Where do you think the future of neuroscience is going? Obviously you're a leader in this space.
So what are you excited about?
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Thanks for asking. I'm really excited about understanding that there is more to the human experience than maybe meets the eye and how a lot of things that could be considered maybe more esoteric or spiritual experiences or strange, you know, things that we can't explain with modern science. We actually find that all the time in our laboratory. Like people intuition shows up a certain way in the brain and if we can document it and we can understand how that shows up, I think that that's an incredible thing. I think that we can all really heal when we come into understanding and trusting our gut and feeling that sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, whatever that means for us.
So I'm really excited about the breakthroughs that we're finding.
We've actually been doing this for at least 15 years together.
But just some of these. The newer technologies and methodologies to help not only measure it and hopefully start to explain it. That's part of where we're at, but also to be able to help enhance that for folks, because we're not.
It's not like there's a professional hat and a personal hat, and then there's our family life and then there's. Whatever. We're actually whole people. And I think that that intuitive part is a part that is an exciting frontier in exploration in the brain and something that we can bring forward in reality.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: That sounds fascinating. It sounds like obviously you're. You're way ahead with all the years of research that you've done. And I think that that was one of the main reasons I was so excited for you to be a guest today is just to give really, more of the science and the. And the facts behind a lot of the things we just spoke about. And it's not really just, you know, the way somebody might feel. And I think with clinicians, sometimes that will almost make them feel guilty about, you know, some of these things like burnout or. Or, you know, just kind of working through things.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: So, yeah, I like to say to people, if you knew that you had an ankle sprain and you were wondering why you were walking funny, and then somebody says that's what happens when you sprain your ankle. You know, and then it's. And then it's. The light bulb can go off, and it's not a personal thing anymore. And the thing is, is that we have kind of the.
Sometimes the bumps and bruises of our past and. Or our genetic imprints that we receive from our parents. They're there and we're kind of limping along with them. But imagine never receiving PT and you're still trying to run a marathon on it. Right. And so it's. We don't have to have any shame over this stuff. It's okay to feel all of the feels. And it's amazing whether. Whether it's through the work that I'm doing or elsewhere. It's amazing to just know that we can understand it and that we can change our experience of reality and that we can have the data to back that up and show where we were and where we are now.
Yeah. And really change our lives. And that when we change our lives that there's so much impact that we have because we hold such an important role for so many people.
Right. We can feel so good about that. Investing in ourselves is helping our patients. It's essential. And our kids and our parents and whoever.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so true. I couldn't, couldn't be more well, well said or spoken. So thank you so much, Amy. Well, tell us if anybody wants to work with you, wants to work with Holon and get some of these therapies that could really be such game changers.
Let let our audience know how they can do that.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Probably best way Stacy, is the, is the website the holonexperience.com there's an application form on there and when people fill that out then that helps us to know who they might best be suited to talk to on the team and then we can fit for program. There's. It could be a little overwhelming all the things that we have and we actually have more available programs than what are represented on the website even at this point because we've just generated some new ones for 2026.
But yeah, that's the best way. Just go to website and, and reach out to us there.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Thanks so much Amy for your time and sharing all of these very helpful tips and, and all these findings that you've. You've made at at Holon. So we appreciate your time.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Thank you to all of our listeners. If you would like to be notified when new episodes air, make sure to hit that subscribe button. And a big thank you to Pacific companies. Without you guys, this podcast is would not be possible.
If you would like to be a guest, Please go to www.pacificcompanies.com.
[00:27:10] Speaker C: thank.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: You.
