Conversations on Healing

Introduction Welcome to the Conversations on Healing Podcast, where host Shay Beider speaks with renowned healthcare leaders, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore the world of wellness, the incredible powers of self-care, and what it truly means to heal today. Join us on this journey to become more whole, healed, and connected.

Shay Beider Hello, this is Shay Beider, and I’m happy to welcome you to the Conversations on Healing Podcast, where we explore the power we have to heal and shape our own destinies. Our guest today is Dr. Robert Melillo. Dr. Melillo is a world-renowned clinician, professor, brain researcher, and bestselling author of the widely read book, “Disconnected Kids”. As a leading authority in developmental neurological conditions, Dr. Melillo is the co-founder of the Brain Balance Achievement Centers and the developer of the Melillo Method. Through this work, he has helped thousands of people to overcome some of the challenges faced with a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other developmental and neurocognitive conditions. As one of the leading experts in treating functional disconnection syndromes, Dr. Melillo’s dedication to this field has helped to inform a whole new treatment model for brain imbalances that can positively impact function and health outcomes.

In today’s episode, we discuss what is happening in the brain when an individual is diagnosed as having a condition like autism, or ADHD, or dyslexia, and a range of different types of mental health disorders. He shares with our listeners ways that fundamental brain imbalances, that occurred very early in childhood, can be treated even years later to improve health outcomes. You’ll learn about his establishment of the Melillo Method, an innovative model to significantly improve neurological brain imbalances. We will hear how Dr. Melillo empowers parents and healthcare providers bringing attention to brain health and the importance that epigenetics plays on this healing journey. So let’s get started exploring the fascinating connection between brain function, behavior, and physical health.

So first of all, I want to welcome you, Dr. Melillo to the Conversations on Healing podcast. Thanks for joining the show.

Dr. Robert Melillo Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Shay Good. Well, I have to say it’s an honor to interview you because I love pioneers. I’ve always loved people who are willing to push the envelope, think a little bit differently, and come to new conclusions that haven’t been drawn before. And certainly, your work, I think, is a reflection of that. So thank you for being a pioneer.

Robert Thank you.

Shay I want to start with a little bit of foundational stuff because we’re going to go into some meaty things today. So, I want to make sure people understand kind of the essence of your work. So, I wanted to first establish that today, more than 20 million children have been diagnosed with attention, behavioral, or learning problems, and something that you call functional disconnection syndrome, or FDS, is really the foundation upon which your work has been built. And as I understand it, it’s a term that you actually coined. And so, first I’d like for you to simply explain for our listeners what FDS, or functional disconnection syndrome, actually is and kind of what’s happening in the brain.

Robert Sure. Yeah. I just want, first of all, for people to understand that my approach to any sort of mental health, developmental, neurological, learning disability, and many physical health issues really all starts with understanding the brain and anything that alters brain development. So, essentially, what we know is that the two hemispheres of the brain are very different, especially in humans. We have the most asymmetric and lateralized brains of any brain on the planet. And as you go up the evolutionary scale, the more intelligent an animal, the more lateralized their brain is. So, effectively, we have two brains in one. And the key to that is that it gives us a lot of space. It gives us a lot of centers that can do a lot of different things, and it gives us much more variability. But the challenge is that it must be integrated. We must be using all areas of the brain synchronously together at all times.

That’s how our brain is designed to work. Anything that interferes with that flow of communication between the right and the left hemisphere, or between different networks in the brain, or from the bottom to the top, or the top down can cause problems. And primarily, what we refer to as imbalances, where we have certain areas or certain networks of the brain are overactive or too active or too connected, where we have other areas of the brain that may be underactive and under connected. And this disruption of the flow of information is called a problem with functional connectivity. And starting in the early nineties, we really realized that almost all brain-related and mental health- related issues were really not related to specific lesions in the brain, or damage, or injury, or genetic mutations, but rather a disruption of what’s called functional communication or functional connectivity. And so, a functional disconnection syndrome is where there’s no physical damage. A disconnection syndrome is where there may be damage to the white matter connecting fibers in the brain, but this is where there is no damage, but there isn’t a flow. There’s something blocking that flow of information. And this is called a functional disconnection syndrome.

Shay Great. And you’ve also discovered some very clear ways to kind of determine, within the first year of life, if a developmental delay is occurring. This can include looking at things like missed milestones, which you can give some examples of that, and also one of your most current passions, which is our primitive reflexes- which people don’t talk a lot about- but in your work, it’s turning out to be actually a very key piece of the puzzle. So, I’d like for you to talk a little bit about some of those early milestones, and the importance of primitive reflexes. So that, for parents or people that are listening that might have a young child that they’re like, “Something’s not quite right, but I am not sure”, you could start to paint a little bit of a picture of what they could be looking for.

Robert Yeah, no, I like the way you put that from the very beginning because we talked about just now a lack of flow. But the question is, ‘Why is there this lack of flow? Why is there overactivity in certain areas and that are both producing symptoms?” And it really all starts in development. So again, what we’ve been able to show in our research, and I think is pretty well recognized, is that in most issues, people that suffer from any mental health, or people that have autoimmune issues, or whatever, there isn’t any physical injury or damage. But what we’ve been able to show is that these are really caused by maturation delays and imbalances, meaning something disrupts maturity of the brain during development, primarily in the first six years. And that is what sets up this imbalance, where certain areas are growing maybe too rapidly, and other areas are growing less.

So, the less active areas are areas that are immature relative to other networks in other areas on the other side of the brain. And this imbalance is where all the symptoms come from, but it’s essentially a visible, invisible balance because there isn’t any damage. So again, how does that start? So, there’s a number of different things. I went through this in great detail in my book, “Autism: The Scientific Truth”, but essentially there are these environmental and/or what we call epigenetic factors that alter the development of the brain and the maturation and the speed of development. And the right brain is taking the lead in development in the first three years. So, in the womb, and for the first three years, the right brain is taking the lead. It’s only about a 30% difference, but that is what shapes what it’s interacting with, what it’s doing, the types of stimulus that are available in the womb and early in development is what shapes the right brain and gives the right brain.

Its unique characteristics of what it does. And primarily, it’s driven by social interactions and emotional interactions and nonverbal communication. And then the left brain kicks in for the next three years. And so, anything that alters that development has a possibility of, again, creating these imbalances that really disrupt communication. And so, one of the things that is most important in development is movement. Human brains are the most immature brains on the planet. We’re the only animals that can’t really move under our own power when we’re born, but we need to move to develop the brain, and we need to engage the sensors in the world and calibrate our brain to the world. And so, we need to move. So, we’re born with these motor reflexes called primitive reflexes that are in the lower brainstem that allow us to do things like root and suck and roll over.

They help a baby initially get out of the womb and push themselves through the birth canal. So, if a child doesn’t go through the birth canal, if they’re C-section right off the bat, we’re not using these reflexes in the way they’re designed. And then they’re designed to get us to roll over at a certain point and then crawl on our belly and then crawl on all fours and pull ourselves up. And right around 12 months, a child should walk, and should be saying a few words, should be pointing, and have eye contact. And at that point, those reflexes should go away. And if they don’t, what we’ve been able to show in our research, they hold back brain development and they prevent the next stage of maturity so that the brain builds from the bottom up, and then this creates top-down regulation. And that usually has more of an effect on the right side of the brain during that developmental stage.

And it either makes it hang on too long, preventing the left brain from coming, or in some kids that are unusually gifted, the left brain comes online too early and it stops that right brain development. And that’s what we see with right brain delays, things like autism, ADHD, OCD, tics, Tourettes, schizophrenia, things like that. Whereas the left brain delays, where the right brain holds on too long, are things like dyslexia, learning disabilities, depression, bipolar disorder, and also then we have immune dysregulation. So, primitive reflexes are a main wind of a diagnostic tool. If they’re present, then we know that the developmental process didn’t occur and they miss their milestones. And it does matter, even though the CDC tells us it doesn’t matter anymore. And then that’s also our key first level of intervention: is to get rid of those reflexes. And when we do, we can then get the brain back on track and get it to potentially catch up to where it should be.

Shay Great. I appreciate that. And I want to also have you share a little bit with our listeners of this fundamental question that I know you get asked all the time, is like, “Well, what’s the cause of autism?” And in a way, what you make very clear in your work is that kind of the alarming rise in a whole series of conditions, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, has in your view much more to do with the environment and kind of the life in which we live, more than the genetics that were dealt. And so, I’d like for you to explain a little bit what you see in terms of the triggers, the environmental triggers that are creating such a significant rise in these conditions. And I do want to be clear, you also point out in your book, “Disconnected Kids”, that there is good data. Now, my background is in public health, you know, a lot of people have said, “Oh, it’s just people are identifying more,” that there’s more cases of autism, but it hasn’t really changed. There’s clear data now that at least in 50% of cases, that you can’t explain it off that way. And so, we know there actually is a rise in these conditions. And so, I want to hear your thoughts on why.

Robert Yeah, and that’s really important that you say that because a lot of people out there for many years have been saying, “Oh, it’s not a real rise. We’re just recognizing it more and diagnosing it better. And so, it’s still only 2% of the population and it’s always been 2% of the population.” And that’s completely not true. And if you really talk to anybody in education, teachers that have been around in special ed for 20 years, 30 years, or even in the past 10 or 15 years, and they’ll tell you there’s clearly a dramatic epidemic increase in kids that are labeled. And actually, even though a lot of the literature and people claim that there’s an overdiagnosis, if you speak to really some of the top experts in the world in epidemiology, they’ll tell you the opposite, that it’s actually most of these issues are underdiagnosed and people still don’t want to actually get the label, or they’re embarrassed, or they don’t want their kids to be labeled.

And so, it’s actually worse than even what the numbers tell us. And so, when you see a rise that dramatic- like going from one in 10,000 30 years ago to one in essentially 24 boys now with autism- and essentially one in four children, or one in five or one in four children, will have some sort of diagnosis that’s significant, and that significant rise, which, as you said, really is at least 50%, can’t be explained by those other factors, that you can’t explain it through genetic terms. So, there’s no such thing as genetic epidemics. You don’t see a genetic mutation that makes its way through the population in a few generations. Any mutations that do enter a population, it takes hundreds of thousands of years before those mutations really have some effect. And most of them are beneficial in some way. And that’s a unique thing. When we look at many of these things, why are they rising if they’re not beneficial?

And when we look at what’s called evolutionary fitness, meaning are you going to have children, we know that most people with autism do not have their own children. Many people with schizophrenia don’t have their own children. People with bipolar, kill themselves five times as many as the normal population and have less children. So, if these were genetic mutations, they should be going away. The parents of children with autism almost never have a diagnosis of autism, but they do have a trait that may look a little like autism. When you see that you’re getting such a rise in these things, genetic mutations don’t do that. So, the only way to explain it is through environmental terms and what we call epigenetics. Meaning, epigenetics means that environmental factors can affect expression of genes, can turn them on or off, and a gene that’s turned off can look just like a gene that’s damaged or mutated or not there, deleted because it’s not producing the protein that it should produce.

The difference is you can turn that gene back on at any time, but you can’t repair or mutated or damaged or absent gene. And the other thing is that in the old days, before 2000, year 2000, we used to think that these epi-mutations or these methyl marks that would block gene expression, that when we had a baby, that the baby starts with a clean genetic slate. All these methyl marks were wiped clean. We now know that that’s not the case- that those methyl marks can be transferred up to at least 11 generations. So, therefore, we see that many of these things seem to run in families, but we know that. So, in the past, we used to think, “Well, if it runs in families, then it must be a genetic mutation,” but it’s not. And that’s a really key distinction because many people think, “Oh, these are genetic mutations.”

There’s nothing we can do about them. And so, therefore, if they’re genetic mutations, they can’t be rising because that’s not how it works. And so, therefore, there’s nothing we can do except learn to accept it, and do nothing about it, and maybe try to improve it a little bit.” And all of that is completely false. We can completely turn those genes back on, but even though the genes are off, it develops this imbalance. So, just turning the genes back on doesn’t correct the problem. You then have to do things to literally then activate certain areas of the brain and inhibit others to be able to create this balance and promote that communication. But when you know how to do that, you can do it, and there’s nothing preventing it, and you can often completely resolve many of these issues.

Shay And that’s- what’s so great is, in your course of study and work, you developed this sort of comprehensive model of what you think is happening in the brain. And so, we started the conversation today by talking about that what you think is actually going on. And then you’ve done a lot of research to show, to build a body of evidence behind that. But then, simultaneous to that, because you’re a clinician and you’re working with actual children and adults and real human beings, you also wanted to develop treatment models so that there was actually something you could do to make it better. So, you’ve actually developed two treatment methods. One is called the Brain Balance Program, that was kind of your first whole program that you developed, and you developed a number of centers for that to execute the delivery of that treatment model. And then, more recently, you’ve developed the Melillo Method. That’s generally, it sounds like from what I’ve been able to read and get my hands on, for a little bit more of the more severe neurologic conditions. So kids that have autism that are nonverbal, conditions like schizophrenia, and some of the more challenging mental health disorders. And so, I’d love for you to explain just a little bit about both of your treatment methods, just kind of in a core kind of conceptual framework kind of way, so that our listeners can understand, “Oh, here’s ways you can treat some of these conditions.”

Robert Yeah, so as you said, what’s really driving this rise and the environmental factors are mainly lifestyle factors. So, there’s a lot of different things we want to do, but it really comes to changing the brain- and how do you actually change the brain? A lot of people talk about that, and you don’t really change the brain chemically, biochemically. So, that’s why drugs don’t really have any sort of therapeutic effect. They don’t really cause neuroplasticity, when you stop taking the drug, the effect is that it wears off at the end of the day, and you have to keep on taking it forever. Diet and nutrition plays some role, but they don’t really structurally change the brain. And this is a new concept to many people. And so, think of the brain like you would a muscle like rehab. My background was neurological rehab. And so, when we are trying to rehabilitate the body, we’re doing exercises and we’re doing different things to grow the muscles, or to work on specific functions, or work on types of movements, or stimulate different senses.

And we’re doing that in a very directed way, and that’s what we’re doing to the brain. So, the brain works based on activity, sensory activity that we perceive. So, light, sounds, smells, temperature, touch, taste, gravity- all of these things are senses that literally are picked up and registered in different areas of the brain. And the more we do them or the less we do them, our brain will literally grow and change more connections or less connections. It will, just like a muscle- if we don’t use it, it will atrophy. If we use it more, it will hypertrophy. It will get bigger and more stronger and more… And that’s the way areas of our brain work. And the brain is the most adaptable organ that we know of. It can change so fast and so readily. When you learn something new, within an hour, we can measure physical changes in the brain and the size of the brain.

So, cognitively, when you do different things like pay attention, or learn math, or read a book, or memorize something, or read someone’s facial expression socially or consciously or subconsciously, you are using areas of the brain. And so, what we do is we say, “Okay, what areas of the brain are underactive? What areas are overactive?” And so, what we want to do is be able to target them, but most of those areas start from the bottom up and feed into the brain. So, just doing things that are what we call top-down- just doing things directed to the brain- isn’t really, if the bottom-up hasn’t been built. It’s like building a building. The foundation has to be solid before we can build the other layers. We’re not going to build a penthouse before we have the foundation solid. But if we still have these primitive reflexes, and if we haven’t gone through normal development, and if we’re not processing information properly, so our brain is not registering it- even though it may be available, we’re not picking it up- then our brain literally isn’t growing and it stays in a more immature state.

And then the other areas may be growing too fast because there’s always this kind of balance between the two sides of the brain. And so, we do things like visual stimulation with light, different frequencies of light, different colors. All of the brain networks work on frequencies. That’s the language of the brain. So, things like delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, high gamma, high delta- these all relate to different frequencies of the brain, from zero up to a hundred hertz. And when two networks are talking, they need to be on the same frequency band. And so, different colors of light actually activate the brain at different frequencies, different smells, different types of sound or music can do that. A different flicker rate can be done at a 40 hertz, which creates a 40 hertz in the brain in different areas in the visual area. We can do cognitive activities like word reading versus reading comprehension.

We can do physical activities that stimulate the brain. We can use sound, which activates the temporal lobe; vision, which activates the occipital lobe; touch or vibration or balance, which works on the parietal lobe. We can do motor activity, which works on the frontal lobe. We can do cognitive skills, and there are right brain and left brain version. So, we may do music or sound or light from only the left side of the body to the right side of the brain, but we may also use things like transcranial direct stimulation that will dampen the frequency of one side of the brain and bring up this side of the other, or use different sound, or do all of that together at the same time, individualize for the needs of that patient. And then we support it with diet and nutrition. And we may do things like neurofeedback, but it’s all at appropriate developmental stage, and it’s all designed to physically change the connectivity and the frequency of firing of the brain and brainwaves.

Shay Thank you. I really appreciate- I felt like you gave a really nice, comprehensive overview of the types of tools and things that you can use to treat some of these conditions. So, that’s really helpful. I’m also curious if you could just give- you have in the book “Disconnected Kids” a number of stories of kids you’ve worked with and things you’ve seen. And obviously, I’m sure you’ve adjusted those to protect their privacy and follow HIPAA and all the good things. But I was thinking maybe you could share just a simple story of someone that you’ve worked with- a patient, kind of case study, so to speak- so that our listeners could just sort of hear a real-life example of what this looks like.

Robert I may give examples or talk a lot about autism spectrum. That’s one of my main areas of research. But why do we do that? Because I believe that all mental health issues really start in childhood, and I think there’s good evidence for that. I also believe that they’re all related to these functional disconnection syndromes, and they all develop, and they’re affecting different areas of the brain, different networks, and imbalances between them, but they all have the same underlying factor. But I think most people would agree that autism is probably the most mysterious- it’s the most challenging to understand because there’s so much going on and it’s so severe. And you have such a wide range of some kids that are just brilliant in the Asperger’s range and so articulate, but yet so socially affected. And then you have other people that completely can’t speak at all, have no control over their body, and almost all of them have severe metabolic issues and digestive issues and autoimmune issues and OCD and tics and ADHD, and they have all of these things.

And it’s so challenging. Very few people really have any clear understanding of what may be happening in the brain. And so for me, that’s been my area of research because I figured that if I could understand that, then I could understand any of them. And then the rest of them are relatively easy. And so we work with everything. And that’s the difference with the Melillo Method- is that the Brain Balance Method was a little bit more targeted towards more high- functioning children. This method is really from zero to 80, and it affects anybody in the developmental, because again, most mental health issues start in childhood, and it’s still a developmental problem when we talk about it. We talk about a lot of our research in autism, but it really applies to ADHD, or to OCD, or dyslexia, or learning disabilities, or processing disorders, or depression, or bipolar, or schizophrenia.

All of them are the same thing. One of the most fascinating things for me and the most challenging, I think, is in the population of kids with autism that don’t speak- why don’t they speak? No one’s ever, no researcher has ever really answered that. And most people know that the left side of the brain is really where we have verbal language. So, most people assume that there must be a problem in the left brain, even though most of the symptoms that we see in autism, that are most dominant, are really deficits in the right side of the brain. And if anything, overactivity of the left side of the brain, or where they’re hyperconnected. As I said, things like tics or stimming or repetitive movements or hyperactivity come from overactivity of an area called Brodmann Area 6, on the left side of the brain because of underdevelopment on the right.

So, looking at that, I wanted to understand why. And so we also used, partly, in our office a technique called Rapid Prompting Method, RPM, a way of helping children to type with a letter board. And what we see is many of these kids, that are completely nonverbal, that seem like they don’t know anything that people say, have cognitive deficiencies. Everybody, every person or child in the autism spectrum, I will tell you, is a genius with their left brain, even though they don’t all show savant-level skills, they all have them. They’re there, but some of them are so impaired mainly because of a delay in the right side where they can’t feel their body and they can’t control their body. And so, they have all these unwanted movements, and they can’t move their body, and they can’t move their mouth, and they don’t feel their tongue, and that’s why they can’t speak.

But all the words are there. And so we had this one child, Wesley, who is from Indiana and he’s 12 years old, and he came in and he’d be working with us virtually. His parents are really great, and they were really hard-working. Now this is a child who’s never spoken a word his whole life and he has really horrible tics and stims, and he would get very aggressive and bite people and they thought he didn’t know anything. I mean, he would just sit in a school and just sit there and he wouldn’t really do anything. And then he came to our center and we started working with him and we started using this RPM, and he starts typing full sentences and saying all these things clearly that he knows everything, he knows all the words, he’s highly intelligent. And he starts talking to his parents and they’re communicating with him for the first time, and they start crying and it’s like this beautiful moment.

And from that point, he stopped biting people because a lot of the biting was, he was so frustrated. Imagine many of these kids are literally geniuses with all the words in their brain and know everything and know that they’re even smarter than most other kids their age, but can’t show it in any way because they have no control of their body and they don’t feel their body. And imagine how frustrating that would be to be trapped in a body like that and people ignore you and talk around you and act like you’re deaf and they forget you’re there in the room and you’re invisible to them. And that’s why they bite because it’s like, hey, I’m here. Pay attention to me. I know what you’re saying right now, but they can’t control their body in any sort of reliable way. This kid, Wesley starts typing and he starts telling us stuff.

Other kids have said this, but this kid is unbelievable. I mean, he’s literally describing to us exactly what I always thought was going on, but never knew for sure because nobody could tell you, even though many people have written books about this, but no one has ever been as clear as Wesley. And he tells us things like, again, I don’t feel my body. I can’t control my body. I don’t feel my tongue. But then after we spun him one day and activate the inner ear, he said, “I just felt my tongue for the first time and I feel like I’m about to speak.” And he describes this raging battle between his left brain and his right brain and how his left brain is too dominant, and won’t allow his right brain to come up. And he tells his parents they need to attack his left brain, and this is a kid.

He knows none of my work or anything. This is coming from him and it’s really unbelievable. I mean, this kid talks about- you know he wants to learn quantum physics and he wants to learn the structure of atoms. When they say, what do you want to learn in school? Like the structure of atoms and the molecular makeup? I mean, this kid is brilliant, but he said one thing that was really incredible and profound. Imagine we all speak to ourselves in the left side of our brain, in our verbal centers, we speak to ourselves all day. We talk to ourselves, and we even have different voices, whether we’re reading a book silently in our head or whether we’re just talking to ourselves casually. And so if you’ve never spoken, would you talk to yourself? Could you talk to yourself in your own brain? What would that be like?

Is it silent? So he answered that and he said, “I do talk to myself in my head, but I don’t know what my voice sounds like, so I use somebody else’s voice.” And then a few days later, he said, “I’m feeling my body and I’m feeling better, and I think I heard a noise in my head today, and I think it might’ve been my own voice.” Then later on that day, he typed to his parents, “I just heard my own voice for the first time. This is so cool. You have to tell Dr. Melillo.” These are the things that drive me- that’s such fascinating information, and it’s coming from them and it’s their words. And all they say all day is, “I want to speak so badly. Help me speak. Help me to stop stimming. I want to be able to show people that I love them and I don’t want them to be afraid of me,” and they’re completely aware of it. And so, when we can get a child like that to find their voice, whether through typing or whether through actually speaking- which we do all the time- to me, I can’t imagine a better job that I could have in the world, or more impact that I could make, or more value that I could add than to be able to do that for them and for their families. For a parent to be able to hear their child say, “I love you.” I mean, it’s priceless.

Shay It’s so moving because I know so many of these kids and have worked with so many of these kids over the years, and I know the pain of feeling locked in, that you can’t feel your own body, having so much inner intelligence, but no functional way to express and communicate that out easily. I mean, thankfully now there is a deepened understanding that’s occurring, but the level of discrimination that individuals experience, it’s just painful. So, I’m very grateful for methods like yours that are helping to unlock the brain in the ways that there’ve been these patterns of essentially dysregulation and disruption that create this experience that I feel like is so inwardly painful. It’s a very, very difficult thing, not only for the person themselves who has the diagnosis, but for their entire family and everyone who loves them. So, yeah, I’m curious what you would say if there’s someone listening to the show who has a child who’s newly diagnosed with any one of the conditions that you treat, even just bipolar or a young adult who’s recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. These are scary, scary words. When you hear these labels get tossed around, certainly autism, which we’ve been talking about, dyslexia, ADHD, they’re scary for a parent. And so when you think about, what’s the first thing you want to say to people when they get these kind of scary bits of information, what do you think you would want to offer?

Robert Initially I started this because I’m a parent of three children who had different diagnoses. First of all, the children that developed these imbalances, I say this to parents all the time, I just had a child last night and there’s five kids in the family, and four of them are great, and this one child is really so severely impaired. All of his siblings are off the chart, smart. And they wonder, my kids are so bright, why not this one? And I tell them, this one is actually the brightest. The kids that are most susceptible are the ones that are the most gifted, and these kids are geniuses, even though they may be told that they’re cognitively impaired or they’re really not that bright, that’s completely untrue even though they can’t show it. So, first of all, understand that you did nothing wrong, that you gave them a gift, but that gift is a little bit too much because there’s an imbalance.

The other thing is when my child was first diagnosed with ADHD, the first question that came in my brain, and of course I knew a lot about neurology in the brain, was, what is it? What does that mean? What is it actually happening in the brain? And I get families that come from all over the world, literally, and have been everywhere and seen everybody. And the first question I asked them is usually, “Did anybody ever try to explain what’s happening in your child’s brain or in your brain?” And they look at me and they say, “No.” And so, understand a parent that you’ll get this diagnosis and then no one will explain to you what it actually is. So, you’re left with this terrible imagination, and then they’ll tell you that there’s nothing you can do about it, even though they don’t know what it is.

That always killed me. I’d go to people and say, “Well, what is it?” And they’d say, “Well, I don’t know, but there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.” And I’d say, “Wait a second. You just said you don’t know what it is. How can you then tell me you can’t do anything about it.” It’s just, you know, that’s accepted. That’s what we accept. And I wasn’t willing to accept that with my own child, and I wasn’t willing to accept it once I was able to help my own son, and I knew the truth and I studied it, and I spent 10 years researching it and created a textbook around it. So understand that most of the people that are going to give you the diagnosis, they won’t tell you what it is because they don’t know what it is, they have no idea. But these are brain-related issues, and they’re not genetic mutations most of the time.

They’re not brain injuries, they’re not damage. And there are things that can be completely changed, and this individual is gifted and this person can be very, very special. So, if somebody can’t explain to you what’s happening in the brain, run away from them and don’t listen to them. Go to somebody that can, and this happens to everybody. I just had a doctor who, he’s one of the top surgeons in the country, and he and his wife have a child at about five years of age, and he sat in my office, and again, I said to him, “Did anybody ever explain to you what’s happening in your son’s brain?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “You’re a doctor and if somebody comes in and you’re going to do- you going to operate on them, do you explain to them what’s wrong with them? Do you explain to them what you’re going to do?”

He said, “Yeah, I use diagrams and models and everything, and I go through in detail what I’m going to do, and what’s wrong and what the problem is and how we fix it.” I said, “Yeah, and did they do that with you and your son?” He said, “No.” I said, “Didn’t you think that was unusual as a doctor?” He said, “Yeah, but I guess I was just in such shock and I didn’t know, and they didn’t say anything. I didn’t even think to ask.” I was like, “Well, to me, that’s the only question that matters. What is actually happening and how do you change that?” And that’s what I’ve developed. And I think other people may have an understanding, but there’s not too many people that have put together an actual way to change that problem. And it’s all about dealing with the core issue and dealing with that problem. And that’s what I would tell parents, is that there is a solution. Find the right person, and understand that your child is gifted and fight like hell, and it’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to be hard, but don’t just sit back and accept it. I mean, accept them. Don’t judge them, and don’t let others judge them, but don’t just accept it. Don’t just sit back and say,

“Oh, there’s nothing I can do.” Because there are many things you can do.

Shay I’d also like to touch on, in our conversation, trauma, because trauma also very deeply impacts the parasympathetic nervous system. And I’ve heard you say that it particularly impacts the right hemisphere of the brain, and that there are things that you can do. I know you’ve mentioned to me previously that you’ve worked with some vets who’ve gone to war, come back with pretty significant PTSD symptoms. And so, I’m interested to hear you share also a little bit about how trauma affects the brain, and what can be done to heal from significant traumatic events. It’s just another part of your work I want to be sure to touch into.

Robert Yeah. So, when you look at the research on adverse childhood experiences, which is a huge study that most people never heard of, but it’s actually one of the biggest studies ever done, where back in the eighties and early nineties, they identified 10 different types of what they called adverse childhood experiences that would be looked at as some form of childhood trauma- neglect, abuse, living with somebody that has substance abuse or violence in the home, or people have been incarcerated- all these different things that they identified. And they showed that in the people that had four or more of the adverse childhood experiences, there was anywhere from a 400 to 1200% risk of other types of illnesses, things like cardiac disease, cancer, diabetes, all different types of health-related problems. And they died 20 years earlier on average. And they wanted to know why. I mean, what was the actual effect?

What did the trauma do? And they realized that it actually impacted the brain and that it caused a neurodevelopmental delay, so that it disrupted the development of the brain. And the brain is developing in those early three years. And the brain, the right brain is wired for emotions, and it’s wired to self-regulate, and it’s wired to connect to other people, and that is a primary job. So, it’s incredibly sensitive to those emotional and social cues. And if they’re not there- if they’re neglected- that impacts brain development and that right brain and attachment, and creates a certain type of attachment disorder. If there’s too much signals, or if there’s abusive signals there, that can over activate the right brain and cause this sense of danger and chronic anxiety and overwhelming guilt and shame, and self-esteem issues, and fear of rejection that can haunt people their whole life.

And so, there’s these different impacts, but that they have- but all of it is due to that. Now, most of the kids I work with come from incredible families that have no history of abuse or trauma, but yet have neurodevelopmental delays and have all the same signs of that. Now also, when you talk about PTSD, it’s been shown that 15% of soldiers on average get PTSD. Why those 15%? Well, the one thing that has been noted is that what’s unique in them, is that the 15% all seem to have a hyper-startle response. What does that mean? Why is that significant? Because a startle response is a primitive reflex that is retained, called the Moro reflex, and it’s related to the sympathetic nervous system and the inflammatory system of the immune system. And so, what we see is that I believe that if there isn’t proper development of that right brain and people don’t have the ability to self-regulate, and subconsciously, when there is trauma, there’s this flood of cortisol, and it literally disconnects the two hemispheres- literally disconnects them- and it forms a memory. But it’s a subconscious memory in the right brain and in the body.

So, most people that have traumatized, raped, or in war, they don’t remember the actual trauma, but it’s remembered in their brain subconsciously. And this was what Freud’s work was all about. He believed that making the subconscious conscious was the way to heal it. Now, there’s a lot of movement in psychotherapy and in psychiatry to do right-brain therapy that’s not talk therapy, but it’s what they call listening therapy. It’s empathizing. It’s really relating on more of a nonverbal understanding, without words, to heal those things. But I believe that your threshold for trauma is dependent on also that development of your brain- that early development of your brain. And if you have these retained reflexes, then you’re more susceptible to being traumatized, and you don’t have the ability to self-regulate as well. And that’s where I believe trauma primarily lives. And if we can reconnect the hemispheres and balance it out and activate the brain and develop it, I think that’s the best way. Along with traditional psychotherapy treatments for trauma, things like EMDR or other things that are very important. But I work alongside a lot of psychological trauma therapists. I do the brain work and change their physical brain, and then they give the signals that now can rewire the brain and heal the trauma.

Shay Yeah, it’s fascinating. In the work that we do at Integrative Touch, we work a lot with trauma. That’s a big part of what we work with, and we use some of the more traditional methods, but we also use the therapeutic approach that’s highly somatic. That has very significant portions of the session, are nonverbal, and that’s co-regulated through a team of providers, because we see that’s what works. That’s how people actually heal these really deep, significant traumas that have essentially disrupted an entire life. You heal them often non-verbally, from a place of co-regulation, and you heal often in community, right, because you’re being stabilized by the people around you. And so much of it is in the soma- it’s in the body. So it’s fascinating what we are just, I’m practical as are you in the approach of what’s actually working. And I see that’s what’s actually working in many cases.

Robert So it’s really fascinating. Right now, I don’t know if you know the work of people like Alan Shore, or Dan Seigel, or Ian McGilchrist, or Lou Cozolino, and there’s a recent book that I’m just finishing called “The Divided Therapist”. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but you should get it because they’re talking about psychiatry and psychology, all in this right-brain, nonverbal type of healing, and how all trauma and all most psychological issues really are related to brain imbalances and deficits. And they have only a psychological or psychiatric approach, but it’s very interesting. They don’t understand, obviously, the somatic system or brain development from a standpoint of looking at the primitive reflexes or using sentry motor movements or diet or nutrition, and all of those things that they’re not talking about. Again, they don’t really have much… that much of a solution other than doing more right brain therapy, but they get good results.

And it’s, I think you’d really want to look into it because these are also people that I think are on the cutting edge of the research. Ian McGilchrist, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but he’s so eloquent in describing the whole idea of brain asymmetry, and how it relates to psychiatric illnesses, and what’s happening in our lifestyle, and how we’ve been moving so much more towards a left-brain model. And this is why we’re seeing all of these things rising, especially these right-brain underactivities and overactivities in our society. And traditional talk therapy has gone so much to the left brain, and they’re basically saying now that that’s a wrong approach, and we need to go into that more empathetic, listening, loving connection to really heal people.

Shay Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re finding in our clinical work, but it’s beautiful to see it in real life actually working. You mentioned to me previously that you see the future of medicine, is a brain-based model of health. And so, I really want to dig in a little with you about, what do you mean by that and how do you see the future of medicine?

Robert Yeah, I think the brain is- we all understand it’s the most fascinating thing in the universe, I think, and even the idea of artificial intelligence. I did a lecture maybe about 10 years ago at MIT to their artificial intelligence department because they still had not even come close to creating a program, a computer program, that could think like the human brain, and I don’t think they ever really will. So, the main difference in the human brain, has to do with what we call embodiment and self-awareness. That’s also the main problem they see in AI- the idea of being able to analyze data and collect data and put… that’s what the left brain does. We use this analogy that the brain is like a computer, but it’s not because the right brain is actually really the more intelligent, and the right brain can synthesize multiple bits of information simultaneously together, and it subconsciously knows everything.

And I believe we have a subconscious free will. Some people talk about free will and whether we have free will or not. I have written a paper on it that’s very popular. Robert Polsky just wrote a recent book. He says, “There is no such thing as free will,” because we think only in conscious terms. The right brain is really the more intelligent brain. It’s the more intuitive, and so the brain is- we still, it’s even greater than we think- but it regulates everything when it develops properly and when it’s functioning in an optimal way. It keeps everything going. And so why do we get an infection? And most lifestyle issues and chronic illnesses are really not infectious disease. We had the pandemic and everybody’s caught up on that, but that’s really a very small thing. Really, chronic illnesses, heart disease, diabetes, and all of that is a breakdown of the body and mainly because of a breakdown or because of lack of development of the brain and its ability to regulate it.

It’s like if you had a CEO of a company and the company’s not there, and the CEO isn’t there, and the things start to break down. Different departments break down, and you can try to fix that department, but you’re putting out fires because the main problem is the CEO isn’t there. There’s nobody from the top regulating it, and that’s the way the brain is. And I think more and more we’re going to realize, as we see this parallel rise of mental health issues and autoimmune issues and physical, chronic health issues like diabetes and obesity, they’re rising at the same rate. And that’s because it’s all related to a problem with the brain and early development of the brain. And that’s what’s happening. And we’re impacting our children earlier and earlier. They’re not moving their bodies, which is what develops the brain- movement, interacting with the world, interacting, climbing trees, riding bikes, being in the fields, interacting with other people and other children, especially in the first three years. And technology, like video games and screens, literally stop, literally inhibit right brain development and bring the left brain on too early, and literally stop emotional development and hinder emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationships, and creativity, and imagination, and all of the things that are so critical to humans that make us so unique- that we’re not just about remembering data and spitting out data and facts, which is where our whole education system has gone and where everything has gone and all of our lifestyle is towards there. And we’re losing.

That’s what Ian McGilchrist calls the right brain the master, right? And so I believe that we’re starting to recognize this. And there are other people like me and McGilchrist, and other people sounding the alarm, and talking about this, and coming up with effective treatments that are treating things better than anything in traditional medicine, or traditional psychology, or traditional education, and with the most difficult and challenging issues. And I believe that right now, I was at a conference, and they started off by saying the number one Google health term search in the world is brain health. That’s the number one Google term for a search in the world right now in related to health. So I believe we’re starting to see it, and understand it, and I believe eventually- it may be 10 or 20 years- we will have a model of health. I think the only thing that’ll prevent it is the pharmaceutical company not wanting…

Shay The profit goes away when the model doesn’t require a pharmaceutical intervention. There is that challenge. Because this is a show that is focused on healing and how we heal, I always like to ask everyone how they would define or describe what healing is, because each guest comes at that from such a different perspective. So based on your body of work, how would you define or describe what healing is?

Robert Helping someone to achieve the optimal physical, mental, emotional and social potential- their ultimate potential- meet that, so that they have a total sense of wellbeing. Every aspect of their health is optimized, that you’re not trying to change the person, you’re just trying to make them become the best version that their genes can do. And all of us have multiple versions of who we could be depending on our gene expression, and depending on how our brain grows and develops. We could be- all of us could be one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived, and all of us could also be one of the most impaired people that ever lived, in the same genetic makeup. We all have this incredible potential. And so, my healing is being able to help people achieve the best version of themselves and a complete level of wellbeing.

Shay That’s great. I appreciate that. Well, for folks who are listening, I just want to emphasize the third edition of your book, “Disconnected Kids” came out. You added a whole chapter on primitive reflexes, some of your more recent work- I think in the last five years. And it really does lay out… it’s a very kind of practical book in that there’s a whole section on how you can understand and see and even self-diagnose a little bit as a parent, what’s happening with your child. And I think that is particularly helpful because, as you’ve indicated in our conversation today, a lot of healthcare providers aren’t really understanding this basic concept of the left and right sort of hemispheric asymmetry and the functional disconnection that’s occurring in the brain. And so, if they’re not aware of that, then the way they’re going to approach some of these conditions is completely changed.

And so your book really maps out what you see is happening and then how you can identify it, how you can notice if there’s key milestones that are being missed, if those primitive reflexes aren’t lingering longer than they should, so that people can grapple with, “Okay, what’s happening in my own child?” And then, through your work now, you also have your Brain Balance Centers as well as the work that you’re developing currently in New York for the Melillo Method, that’s providing real treatment options for people that are feeling like they need help. So it’s a great starting point for folks who need support. And so I want to mention that and just give you an opportunity, kind of in closing, if there’s anything else that you feel is important to share in our conversation today.

Robert Yeah, like you said, I think that book “Disconnected Kids” is great. It’s almost, I want to make it almost like an instruction manual. I have a lot of clinicians that use that because it kind of teaches them how to assess the brain and how to be able to interact and change it. And it certainly does for a parent, but I want them to remind them that, again, I have many parents that tell me, as they read the book, intending to learn more of their child, and they do. And they come to me and they say, “This makes so much sense. And how did you know my child? You described them.” But then they often say, “I also saw me in this book, and I still see me in this book,” because it’s really the story of brain development. And most of the adult mental health issues, as I said, actually start in childhood. And that can be changed. So in our practice, the Melillo Method practices, we have an adult side, and we have a children’s side, and literally two separate waiting areas. And so, we work with the children and we work with adults. We work often with the parents of the children that we’re working with. They need to heal themselves as well.

It’s important to do that. Put your mask on first, of course, and be able to do that. But there’s hope, and do your own research. I think reading that book is good because it will give you, and there’s a ton of research underlying what I do. There’s even people out there that will say things like, “Oh, the whole right brain, left brain thing is a myth and that doesn’t exist.” That’s completely untrue. I think who’s ever saying that really doesn’t understand the brain at all, and clearly has never worked with any patients. So maybe, they have just looked at computer models of the brain and really don’t understand the brain as a living organ and how it works. But really, all of the symptoms come down to that right and left brain, and even physical symptoms. So, I mean, if somebody has a gluten sensitivity or dairy sensitivity, you have to always ask, “Why do I have that?” You shouldn’t, if your body and your brain were working optimally and your immune system works, you shouldn’t. So there’s always something that can be done. So there’s hope, and that’s kind of my message. When you walk in my office, there’s a sign my wife sent me that says, “Hope lives here.” And there’s always hope, and just keep on trying, and you can find a solution.

Shay Well, that’s fantastic, and I certainly appreciate your body of work and the significant contribution that you’ve made to the field as whole. So, thank you so much for joining the show today. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you, Dr. Melillo.

Robert Thank you very much.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Conversations on Healing Podcast. If you haven’t yet, please go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast, it helps so you won’t miss an episode. See you next time.