Content warning: This episode contains conversations on addiction and self-harm.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, our host Levi Sowers tackles his first solo interview as Brandon takes time away to focus on his education. Join us as Levi speaks with our guest, Louis Kolling.

Louis Kolling has a PhD in molecular biophysics and is also a US Army veteran, having served from 2006 to 2012 as a sergeant during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Kolling currently conducts research as a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Iowa department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology. Recreationally, he is also powerlifter with four national and eleven state records.

Kolling’s unique perspective is the highlight of this episode. As both a veteran in need of the VA’s services and a researcher working to tackle problems those like him could face, Kolling is uniquely poised to be a perfect guest for the Vets First Podcast.

This interview centers around Louis’s personal history with enlisting in the military at a young age and searching for a purpose within its ranks and within the world of higher education. Kolling explains how his experiences led to struggles with alcohol dependency and depression and how, like many veterans, he was hesitant to seek help from the VA at a time when its services were undergoing major changes. Kolling explains the stigma that veterans face when confronting mental health issues and how his experiences have taught him how to help other veterans face their own hesitations.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea are joined by Neil Andrews for a collaborative interview.

Niel Andrews is the executive editor and science journalist for the Migraine Science Collaborative, which serves as an online platform dedicated to a wide array of migraine-related research in pursuit of their mission statement, “To accelerate research advances in migraine and headache diseases.” Andrews explains how they aim to bridge the gap between complex scientific findings and a wider audience, ensuring that their content is accessible and informative for both experts and non-experts alike.

With a twist on our usual format, Neil Andrews conducts the first half of the interview and questions our hosts on the origins of the Vets First Podcast, which was created with a similar goal in communicating complex scientific issues to veterans and to better understand the issues they face. Levi and Brandon reflect on their interactions with veterans and the strength and resiliency of dealing with unseen diseases like migraines. Our hosts explain how, in contrast to other areas of pain research, migraine research has seen continued innovations. Despite this, they emphasize the need for more scientists dedicated to the field.

In the second half of the interview, Brandon and Levi question Neil Andrews about his life as a science journalist and the challenges faced by the Migraine Science Collaborative. Having shared similar experiences in their pursuits of communicating research, the trio discusses the difficulties in conveying intricate scientific methodologies and techniques to non-specialists but emphasizes the importance of making these studies more accessible and understandable.

Overall, the episode offers a look into the complexities of migraine research, the challenges of communicating basic science, and the collaborative efforts aimed at advancing understanding and treatment for individuals affected by migraines.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, hosts Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Dr. Renata Gomes. Dr. Gomes is a medical and forensic specialist with a sub-specialized in regenerative biomedicine who works with blinded Veterans in the United Kingdom. She was born in Portugal into a family with 5 generations of Army officers and moved to England at a young age. She earned her degree in Forensic Medicine and a Masters in Cardiovascular Medicine and Biology from University College London. Dr. Gomes then earned her international PhD in Regenerative Medicine and Biochemistry with the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the University of Eastern Finland (Finland). After gaining her doctorate, Dr. Gomes became a researcher in regenerative medicine and joined the Royal Naval Reserves.

Dr. Gomes established Blind Veterans UK’s research and innovation department in 2017 and was central to the establishment of Bravo Victor in 2021. Blind Veterans UK is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1915 that provides rehabilitation and services for blinded UK Veterans and their families. Bravo Victor was established to invest in the combination of medical research, social welfare research, and innovations to prepare Veterans living with sight loss for the future, as Veterans in the UK stay with Blind Veterans UK for their lifetime.

Dr. Gomes shares about the focus on traumatic brain injury that can cause significant issues in sensory loss, family relationships, and innovations that ensure that Veterans can live independent and fulfilling lives. She also highlights their international collaborations many countries including the United States to better serve Veterans and help stop significant loss of vision through promotion of eye health. Bravo Victor has and continues to work with the Blinded Veterans Association, the only congressionally chartered Veterans Service Organization created for, consisting of, and led by visually impaired Veterans.

For more information about Bravo Victor, viewers can visit https://www.bravovictor.org/. If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, hosts Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Dr. Oliver Gramlich, a research health science specialist at the Iowa City VA Health Care System. He is also a research assistant professor in the Neuroscience and Pharmacology Program at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Gramlich was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and went to graduate school at the University of Mines, where he was interested in biology and ophthalmology. After he obtained his PhD, he was recruited to the University of Iowa to work on glaucoma-related vision loss at the Department of Ophthalmology. This led him to become interested in many other vision-related diseases surrounding the optic nerve, such as multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Throughout the beginning of the episode, Dr. Gramlich narrates his journey to neuro-ophthalmology research at the University of Iowa and his preclinical research at the VA. He discusses the importance of using animal models to translate physiological knowledge from experiments to human subjects. He later talks about the importance of the optic nerve in visual information transmission and elaborates about the physiological mechanisms and effects of various diseases such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

In the second half of the episode, Dr. Gramlich discusses potential treatments for vision-related diseases. He then talks about his work regarding biomarkers of the visual system that relate to humans and describes potential ways to enhance recovery in patients dealing with optic neuritis. Dr. Gramlich shares his work with utilizing a combination of different diets and drugs to manipulate metabolic pathways in order to promote neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects to remedy optic nerve inflammation. Lastly, he describes his use of three-dimensional imaging to observe disease progression and resolution based on multiple variables and how this can directly apply to the clinical side of vision.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, hosts Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Dr. Thomas Zampieri. Dr. Zampieri currently serves on multiple Department of Defense grant review panels and has been appointed to the VA National Research Advisory Council, which is a Congressional mandated council to advise research at the VA. He is also the past president of the Blinded Veterans Association and he’s a former Army Veteran who served during the Vietnam era as an Army medic. In this episode, Dr. Zampieri talks about his career as a physician assistant and as a Veteran suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic degenerative disease that breaks down cells in the retina over time.

Dr. Zampieri started his career early on as an emergency medical technician in rural New Hampshire and Vermont, which led him directly to the Army as a field medic and as a physician assistant. He talks about how the gradual visual loss affected his work and how it ultimately forced him to stop medical practice and leave the VA. He then discusses his perseverance with loss of vision and how he found the motivation to obtain a PhD in Political Science at the age of 47.

Later in the episode, Dr. Zampieri narrates his journey back to the VA through the Blinded Veterans Association as the Director of Government Relations to represent blind Veterans. From there, he obtained many other VA positions and discussed his appreciation for helping Veterans. He elaborates about his efforts towards advocating for more funding in research to assist degenerative eye conditions, particularly vision dysfunction from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Then, Dr. Zampieri communicates about the struggles many Veterans go through with TBI. Finally, he talks about one of his unique meetings with a recently blinded Veteran and demonstrated how you can still live your life well with vision loss.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth “Liz” Holmes is the Blinded Veterans Association National Secretary and is part of the Georgia regional group. She is an Army Veteran and during her career she attended both basic and advanced ordinance courses and airborne school. Liz was born and raised in the south side of Chicago about 15 minutes from Indiana. She went to DePaul University and didn’t initially have plans to join the military. However, seeing that the ROTC program there did not have any women and knowing she could do anything a man could, Liz decided to join the ROTC program in 1975 and received her training at Fort Riley, Kansas. Following college, she joined the service as a reserve officer and then went on active duty for 11 years where she traveled all over the states, Korea, and Germany. Liz served from 1976 to 1987, where in 1976 she was commissioned to be a Second Lieutenant in the ordinant specialty. Following her military service, Liz worked in the United States Postal Service serving in a variety of different ways until retirement in 2014 due to vision loss because of glaucoma. She had never noticed a change in her vision until she went to an eye exam where her glaucoma was diagnosed. Liz had surgery on her left eye but continued to experience issues. She began seeing a specialist that worked to save her right eye’s vision. Liz was referred to the VA for further care and joined other programs to help navigate life with vision loss. While in blind rehabilitation in Birmingham, Alabama, Liz joined the Blinded Veterans Association and became an active member. She shares about her experiences in the military, vision loss with glaucoma, and her involvement in the Blinded Veterans Association.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, hosts Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Dr. Eric Singman, a neuro-ophthalmologist working at the Department of Defense Vision Center of Excellence in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been working with Veterans and active-duty military for 20 years. Prior to his position at the VA, Dr. Singman spent most of his academic career in the greater New York City area, obtaining his MD and PhD with a focus on vision problems associated with optic nerve damage from brain injury.

During this episode, Dr. Singman discusses his clinical role at the VA and explains how he directly works with patients suffering from brain injury induced vision problems. He touches on topics like using stem cells to regenerate affected areas of the nervous system and utilizing different colored NoIR sunglasses to allow visually impaired patients to be more comfortable. He then explains at length about the importance of choosing the right color and how it relates to the optic nerve and its circuitries in the brain.

Later in the episode, Dr. Singman elaborates on injury induced by impacts and talks about what happens physiologically, particularly with the optic nerve. He differentiates the effects on the nerve among blunt, ballistic, and blast injury, and discusses how protection may play a role in vision health depending on the injury. Then, Dr. Singman talks about the potential for brain tissue to have regenerative properties like other organs in the body such as the kidneys and the liver. Lastly, he talks about the social and economic impact of brain injury in Veterans, how he builds a network of physicians and caretakers for his patients to ensure correct treatment, and how traumatic brain injury is likely the key player for many other diseases and disorders outside of the brain injury itself.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.

In this episode of the Vets First Podcast, hosts Dr. Levi Sowers and Brandon Rea interview Loretta Phillips, an Army Veteran from Lancaster, South Carolina. Loretta suffers from visual impairment due to complications from diabetes that progressed due to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. During this conversation, Loretta talks about the patient perspective of dealing with visual loss as a Veteran and shares her journey in getting treatment for her developing issues.

Loretta joined the Army in 1989, where she spent most of her time in Germany amid the Cold War conflict. She obtained the rank of Sergeant in less than three years and served seven in total. After she came back to the United States, she had a daughter. However, four months later, she experienced vision loss during work. Throughout the episode, Loretta describes her diagnosis and the troubles she overcame to get treatment, having to resort to civilian doctors over government health workers at the time. Then, she describes an instance where she almost lost sight completely and how treatment for it damaged her eyes and consequently her eyesight.

Later in the episode, Loretta talks about what life is like with loss of sight and, more specifically, how the Blind Rehabilitation Center with the VA, helped her learn the skills to survive and live with vision loss. Then, she talks about joining the Blind Veterans Association and gives advice to Veterans experiencing visual loss. She encourages Veterans to reach out to the visual programs and discusses how it can be difficult accepting loss of vision. Finally, she talks about both the mental and physical sides of vision impairment and the importance of research for vision loss.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran needing help with visual loss, contact the Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator at your nearest VA medical center or contact the Blind Rehabilitation Service Program by phone which can be found here. There are 13 Blind Rehabilitation Centers around the country, which can help with things like mobility, communication, and living with vision loss.