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This is it. This is precisely what we are supposed to be doing.
In early 2025, I decided not to continue my sports medicine practice. This has been my medical specialty since 2010, but as much as I enjoyed treating peoples’ painful shoulders, knees, and backs, I wanted to focus all of my time on helping people who are suffering from mental and emotional pain. That decision required quite a bit of soul searching. But in the end, the thing that I find most rewarding is performing the stellate ganglion block (SGB) procedure on those who suffer from debilitating anxiety, PTSD, and other conditions that are challenging to treat. SGB is simply the most fulfilling thing that I’ve done in my medical career. So, I went all in and started seeing patients in our clinic in Gambrills, Maryland fulltime.
Best decision. No regrets. I love what I’m doing. I am excited every day I walk into our clinic with the opportunity to help people who are suffering. I truly enjoy what we are doing, together, Jodi and I, as a team.
In 2025, we welcomed patients from all over the world including from 200+ different counties across 35 different US states. The greatest number of our patients came from: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, California, Texas, and Florida. But in 2025 we also had patients travel from as far away as Hawaii and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec as well as overseas from Norway, Germany, The Bahamas, Scotland, The Czech Republic, and Ukraine. We embrace this identity as an international SGB subject matter expert and referral site for people from all backgrounds all over the world.
The year 2025 also brought us several new opportunities to help those who desperately need it.
Sexual Assault Survivors.
In January 2025, we initiated a program we named the “Offering Hope” grant, which provided funding for survivors of sexual trauma to receive stellate ganglion block treatment at no cost. We were blessed with a generous donation from the WAY Foundation that supported this effort. We were able to treat 15 sexual trauma survivors with bilateral stellate ganglion block (SGB) at no cost.
In these 15 patients, we saw:
• An average of a 30.5-point reduction in PTSD symptom scores (PCL-5), and
• An average of a 9.3-point drop in anxiety scores (GAD-7).
But the real impact can be found in their own words:
Our sincere appreciation to The WAY Foundation for their continued support. We are thrilled to continue providing the Offering Hope grant to a limited number of our patients in 2026. We would love to be able to help so many more! We are actively trying to expand the Offering Hope program if we can identify others willing to contribute to our efforts to help those traumatized by sexual violence.
Treating PTSD in Ukraine.
For years now, Jodi and I have wanted to do more to help the people of Ukraine. Each day, Ukrainian Veterans return home with combat trauma. Civilians endure repeated bombings, displacement, and loss. The healthcare system is overwhelmed and under-resourced. Like many Americans, we felt helpless watching the atrocities and suffering as the war with Russia drags on. In 2025, we decided to act, because PTSD in Ukraine demands more than awareness, they require action. With a legitimate skill that could help, we sought a way to bring SGB treatment to Ukraine to help those suffering from the effects of war. We turned to our former teammates in US Special Operations with experience supporting Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Our partners at Task Force Antal jumped at the chance to deliver life-changing SGB treatment in Ukraine. Our goal is to develop SGB expertise as a sustained capability to treat all Ukrainians who could benefit.
In August, we traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine with TF Antal to bring SGB expertise to the 1.8 million Ukrainians suffering from the effects of trauma. This was our first trip in an anticipated series of visits. No words can adequately describe our experience treating Ukrainians with PTSD. In my military career, I deployed multiple times overseas to combat zones, but I never fought on my own soil to protect my nation—my family, my home. The brave men and women of Ukraine have been under siege nonstop for 3+ years. War has taken its toll. We had the opportunity to treat many Ukrainian soldiers recovering from acute injuries of combat trauma, including several former POWs who suffered in Russian captivity.
Here are some testimonies from a few of the Ukrainians we treated with SGB:
We feel truly blessed with this opportunity to share our expertise using SGB with Ukrainian clinicians at their PTSD center of excellence in Kyiv. Together, we treated over 50 Ukrainian trauma survivors from all backgrounds. Their pain was palpable. So was their relief after SGB. The healing will continue under the care of their therapists. We are committed to building a sustainable SGB capability to help treat the nearly 2 million Ukrainian trauma survivors, and we will return to Ukraine in the next few months in early 2026.
Much work to do! If you would like to help, you can contribute to this effort here:
Treating PTSD in Ukraine – The Stellate Ganglion Block Initiative
Slava Ukraini!
Heroyam slava!
~
Спокійне тіло.
Спокійний розум.
Advocacy. Education. Advancing Research.
In December 2025, along with researchers at Ohio State’s STRIVE Center, we published a landmark study in the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics which examined whether adding SGB to cognitive processing therapy (CPT)—a well-established talk therapy—improved PTSD symptoms. We tested whether giving SGB before CPT works better than giving CPT alone, and whether SGB can help people who still have symptoms after therapy.
What we found:
- Those who received SGB first had quicker and greater reductions in PTSD symptoms, as well as depression, anxiety, and physical (body-related) symptoms—reducing scores by roughly 50% on PCL-5, GAD-7, PHQ-9, and PHQ-15 symptom checklists.
- By week 8, 48% of SGB-before-CPT participants reached good end-state functioning, compared to 16% in the SGB-after-CPT group.
- By week 52, 81% of SGB-before-CPT participants showed reliable improvement in PCL-5 scores, while 62% of SGB-after-CPT participants did.
This study adds evidence that SGB can be both an effective symptom-reducing procedure on its own and a valuable adjunct that enhances the impact of proven therapies like CPT. Aside from combat, the most common trauma exposures were physical assault (76.7%) and transportation accident (69.8%).
The full text article can be found here: Effectiveness of combined cognitive processing therapy with stellate ganglion block: an open-label randomized wait-list clinical trial
The scientific poster can be found on our Evidence page here.
Throughout 2025, we conducted numerous podcasts, webinars, presentations, and in-person sessions to raise SGB awareness and improve collaboration between other clinicians in the anxiety and PTSD space. We enjoyed hosting psychiatrists and therapists from VA, MD, DC, RI, and PA to our clinic for informal discussions of how best to coordinate care for our shared patients. We always welcome opportunities to collaborate with other clinicians to optimize the care we provide. The same is true for the wonderful benevolent organizations that sponsor care for some of our patients. These relationships are critical to the care we provide. We really do believe that Medicine is a team sport!
What’s Next?
What will 2026 bring? Who knows!? But we are enthusiastic to roll up our sleeves and keep the momentum going. So many people are suffering in our world today.
So much work to do. Let’s go!
Calm the body. Calm the mind.
