Building the Elite Podcast

In this episode, we're talking with Dr. Elizabeth Delery about what happens to your body when you’re exposed to sewage-contaminated water, such as the water in Coronado that’s heavily polluted by untreated waste from Tijuana. 
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Elizabeth Delery, Ph.D., is a neuropharmacologist and neuroimmunologist studying Alzheimer's disease therapeutics. Formerly an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Marian University Wood College of Osteopathic Medicine, she earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in microbiology & immunology from Tulane University School of Medicine. She completed her dissertation on HIV neuropathogenesis at Tulane National Primate Research Center before pursuing a T32 postdoctoral fellowship at LSU Health Sciences Center. She's passionate about making science accessible and loves all things pathogens, especially the gross and gnarly!
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This is the second part of a two-part series about water contamination in Coronado. In the first part, we talked with Dr. Falk Feddersen about what’s in the water, how it gets there, how it moves up and down the coastline, and how his research forecasts contamination levels in Coronado to predict water quality several days in advance. 
Follow Dr. Delery: 
If you want to learn more about Dr. Delery and follow her work, you can find her on Instagram at @phdelery.

Timestamps:
00:00:23 Introduction to Dr. Elizabeth Delery
00:01:41 Dr. Elizabeth Delery's Education 
00:02:39 Tracking Exposure to Norovirus 
00:03:37 Norovirus: How Does it Work and How Do You Get it?
00:11:13 Timeline of Norovirus Symptoms
00:17:09 Building Immunity to Norovirus
00:18:35 Wide Variety of Virus Strains in Sewage
00:21:24 Treatment for Norovirus
00:23:45 Reducing the Risk of Catching Norovirus
00:29:02 Don't Expose Yourself to Poop Water
00:31:52 Vaccines Can Only Cover Certain Strains
00:35:45 Gambling with Getting Sick in BUDS
00:42:26 Seasonal Variations of Strains
00:44:15 Recovery from Norovirus 
00:46:24 Nutrition and Sleep for Immune System Strength
00:51:00 Impacts of Repeat Infections 
00:52:34 Food, Supplements, Witchcraft: Improving Immunity and Recovery Time
00:56:22 Advice for Pushing Through the Virus
00:59:06 Mental Toughness and Nutrition in BUDS
01:04:16 Toughing it Out Without Going to the Med Bay
01:05:19 Outro

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For BUD/S, SWCC, and Marine Reconnaissance students in Coronado, water quality issues are a constant concern and a major occupational hazard. Dr. Feddersen is one of the leading experts on what’s in Coronado's water, how it gets there, and what it does. 
Falk Feddersen received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in 1999, followed by a position as a postdoctoral scholar for two years at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  
Dr. Feddersen studies various aspects of coastal and nearshore physical oceanography that span waves, currents, turbulence, and biological processes. His research includes instrument development, observations, theory, and modeling. His extensive field work experience includes projects in La Jolla, Huntington Beach, Point. Sal, the Monterey Peninsula, Surf Ranch, Imperial Beach in California, Duck and New River Inlet in North Carolina, and the Virgin Islands.  
These projects have resulted in new insights into how nearshore processes unfold, including rip currents, internal waves, and wind effects on wave overturning.  Many of these findings are vital for understanding how pollution moves in the coastal ocean. 
His work has been supported by NSF, ONR, NOAA, other agencies, and private foundations.
Dr. Feddersen has developed disciplinary and interdisciplinary coastal oceanography courses at SIO at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
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This is the first part of a two-part series on the water contamination in Coronado. In this episode, we’re talking about how the contamination gets into the water, what’s in it, and how scientists model how it spreads and how severe it is on a given day, sort of like a weather forecast. 
In a few days, we’ll release part two, focused on the medical impacts of the contaminated water. In other words, we’ll be discussing what happens to your body when you have to splash around in Tijuana poop water. 
If you’re in Coronado and want to see how much sewage is in the water today, you can find Dr. Feddersen’s pathogen forecast model for Coronado and Imperial Beach at https://pfmweb.ucsd.edu/

Timestamps:
00:00:22 Introduction to Dr. Falk Fedderson
00:02:19  How much Sewage is in the Water in Coronado? 
00:05:19 Viral Gastroenteritis and Norovirus
00:08:18 The Movement of Sewage in Our Oceans
00:12:02 Treatment of Sewage: Worse Over the Past Two Decades
00:17:33 Do New DNA Tests Overstate the Risk?
00:18:44 Are There Airborne Risks?
00:21:05 Improvement on the Horizon for Tijuana  
00:24:41 Sewage Outflow Modeling 
00:26:24 Online Modeling and Beach Advisories
00:28:40 How is the Sampling Actually Done?
00:30:28 Outro

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Chris Brennan is a training, leadership, and human performance specialist who focuses on developing teams, leaders, and instructor cadres operating in mission-critical environments.
Through his consultancy, Omada Performance Concepts, he offers a perspective formed through experience, contemporary research, and human performance methodology. Omada’s proprietary frameworks and services are currently integrated within multiple mission-critical teams and organizations.
Chris served as a Patrol Commander and Trainer in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment across multiple deployed and training environments. His Master of Business and current postgraduate studies in Human Performance Optimization add academic rigour to those experiences, ensuring current best practice in adult learning and performance science.
Through Omada, Chris delivers emerging leader and instructor development programs across specialist policing, emergency services, the resources sector, military, and high-risk industry.
This is our second conversation with Chris discussing leadership concepts. If you’d like to listen to the first one, it’s episode number 113. Today, we’re talking to Chris about two important concepts: dynamic decision-making and how to structure debriefs effectively, efficiently, and consistently. 

More about Chris:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brennan-omada/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omada.performance.concepts/

Omada's Dynamic Decision-Making Framework:
Question 1 – What information do I need? (Where do I find it?)
Aim: Situational Awareness through Information Collection and Triage 
Orientates the leader and team to the information conditions and helps them understand the information that’s currently available, what information is needed, where there may be gaps in the information and where that can be sourced
Question 2 – What needs to happen with this information? (Who needs to know?)
Aim: Action and Communication
Turns actionable information into assigned tasks and establishes reporting priorities so that the team is aligned and moving with shared understanding of the situation. Reinforces information priority to those that need it the most, ie those in the team.
Question 3 – What is the plan and the expected outcome? (When will I reassess?)
Aim: Task Execution and Reassessment
Prompts execution of the plan, with the addition of a reassessment trigger. Every plan should include a defined point at which the leader asks whether the situation has changed and whether the plan needs to change with it.

Omada's IWIPE-A Debrief Framework:
I - Incident Summary
W - What went well?
I - Improves
P - Plan going forward
E - Equipment
A - Accountability

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Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications including motivational interviewing, solution-focused, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.
She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses. She is our go-to performance psych and works one-on-one with many of our clients seeking to sharpen the mental and emotional skills needed to handle some of the toughest training courses in the world.
She’s an invaluable resource for our clients and has played a critical role in the careers of many special operators. 
In this episode, we’re talking to KSD about the grieving process. Typically, we think of grief as the emotional state following a loss like the death of a friend or loved one, but the process is surprisingly similar to other forms of loss, such as the emotional impact of losing out on a major career aspiration, washing out of a selection course, or getting divorced. 

Additional Resources: What to Know About Grief and Loss

More about KSD:
Website - kristascottdixon.com
Coaching for SOF personnel - https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/
KSD’s latest book, Applied Nutrition Coaching and Counseling - https://amzn.to/4xXhp0t

Timestamps:
00:00:22 Introduction to Dr. Krista Scott Dixon
00:01:24 Processing Grief in Death/Grief in Setbacks
00:11:47 Dealing with the Nature of Death
00:18:54 The Brain's Ability to Adjust to Loss
00:23:14 Clichés are Infuriating During Grieving
00:28:22 Excepting a New Reality 
00:31:50 Exposure to Grief in the Military
00:36:04 Unhealthy and Problematic Ways of Coping with Loss
00:41:57 Chemical Avoidance and Numbing in Grief
00:45:19 Communicating Death to Children
00:51:37 Advice on Helping with Others' Grief
00:58:20 Guidelines for Dealing with Grief from Selection
01:04:00 Curling into a Ball or Crawling into a Hole
01:06:01 The "What If"s and "If Only"s of Loss
01:08:02 Survivor's Guilt
01:13:43 Face, Accept, Float, Let Time Pass
01:16:21 Outro

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Dr. Robyn Nadolny is a Biologist and the Chief of the Vector-Borne Disease Branch at the Defense Centers for Public Health at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (DCPH-A). The flagship program of the Vector-Borne Disease Branch is MilTICK, a free, rapid tick-testing program for military beneficiaries. The results provide a tool in the diagnostic toolbox for military beneficiaries, and Dr. Nadolny uses the passive surveillance data generated to better understand changing tick-borne disease dynamics and mitigate risks to US Service Members and their communities. She is also working on tick-borne disease surveillance projects worldwide to support military communities. 
Dr. Nadolny came to DCPH-A in 2016 after completing her PhD in Ecological Sciences from Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, VA. She also holds a M.S. in Biology from ODU, and a B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavioral Biology from Beloit College in Beloit, WI. Her research focuses on the prevention of tick-borne disease through understanding and breaking tick-host-pathogen-environment cycles. Dr. Nadolny has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and is interested in the intersection of ecology and public health.
In this episode, we discuss the types of diseases that can be transmitted to military personnel (and anyone else) through ticks, how those diseases work, where and when the risk is greatest, and what you can do to protect yourself. 
To visit the MilTICK site, which you can use to understand the risk of tick-borne disease at your military installation and submit ticks for testing, go here:
https://ph.health.mil/topics/entomology/kits/Pages/HumanTickTestKitProgram.aspx
There are also many civilian labs where you can submit a tick for testing at a low cost. 
For example:
Pennsylvania Tick Research Lab: https://www.ticklab.org/
Old Dominion University, Virginia: https://sites.wp.odu.edu/tick-team/what-we-do/tick-testing/sending-us-your-ticks/
Ticknology: https://www.ticknology.org/order-test

Timestamps:
00:23 Introduction to Dr. Robyn Nadolny
01:48 What are the Most Common Diseases Spread by Ticks?
03:24 Lesser Known Tick-Spread Diseases
07:19 Alpha Gal: It's Not Just Beef Off the Table 
09:27 The Implications of Lyme Disease
14:16 How Does the Body React After Multiple Tick Bites?
16:06 Rates of These Diseases 
18:21 What Terrain Do Ticks Prefer? 
21:31 What Time of Year are Ticks the Worst?
23:13 Tick Life Cycles  
27:56 Soldiers Protecting Themselves from Ticks in the Field
33:19 Dealing with a Tick Bite in the Field
37:41 Prevalence of Diseases in Ticks
42:34 Vaccines for Tick-Borne Diseases for Pets and People
45:45 Treated Clothing and Repellents
48:21 Outro

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