Change Your Brain Every Day - A Healthy Diet: What to Choose & When to Eat it

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

In terms of a healthy diet, many of us have a handle on what we should be eating, but another important yet often overlooked component is when we should be eating. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and his wife Tana discuss strategies for an eating schedule that can make a major positive impact in your overall health.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are in the middle. Nutrition. I don't have my contacts. Feel better fast and make it last. You have to do all the reading today. So this review is from VC. Love these tips. My husband and I sat down and discussed them.

I'm going to write them all down and start doing them every day. Very practical. Thanks. Definitely sharing the link. Awesome. I love that. Don't try to do everything at once. Right.

I was just going to say that. Pick one, do it until you do it well, then pick another one, add it on. Well, and the one tiny habit that Tana and I talk about all the time when it comes to food, is this good for my brain or bad for it it's actually a game i was been playing with chloe for 13 years now ever since she was two is you know i'm just

like sweetheart is this good for your brain or bad for it and if i said avocado she'd say two thumbs up if i said blueberries she'd ask me if they're organic because that's the kind of child she is. And that's what you want to do for yourself because you want to be healthy, because you love yourself and you don't want the food industry going after your health. That is just so important. So let's talk about meal timing. And the reason I became interested in this is because people who have low blood sugar often get themselves into psychiatric trouble. Or all kinds of trouble, relationship trouble, like all kinds of trouble. So listen to the symptoms of low blood sugar, of hypoglycemia. And many of my patients have this. So you know this was a question on my nursing exam. I didn't know.

Yeah. It's like very similar. Yeah. Feeling sleepy or drugged. Mental confusion. Inability to concentrate. Impaired memory. Dizziness, lightheadedness, nervousness, depression, irritability, blurred vision, overwhelming fatigue, anxiety, panic

attacks, palpitations, shaky hands, butterflies, flushing, sweating, faintness, head pressure, headaches, insomnia, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Okay. So on my nursing exam, they only picked the really acute ones like aggression, dizziness, aggression, fainting, those pretty significant severe ones. And the answer was low blood sugar. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So I'm actually beginning to work on a new book called the end of mental illness. And I'm like, get your diet, right. It's like so important. Uh, so it's very important to have protein and healthy fat at every meal and try not to go too long without eating if you have these symptoms. Now, we actually like it when people do intermittent fasting. Didn't we have one of our young high know high profile patients come in and he was getting

himself into some pretty hot water since he started eating but his blood sugar was insanely low and of course you know everyone's like well that's too simplistic um no actually it's not you make bad decisions intermittent fasting has been shown to be helpful to clean up the trash that builds up in your brain. So I have a question on intermittent fasting. You can drink clear liquids, right? Yes. Yeah.

So it's not that hard. That is not vodka. Okay. Really? Vodka's a clear liquid. It's not Kool-Aid either. But I'm, okay. My point being you can have tea, you can have like green tea and stuff like that.

Yes. Okay. It's the calories. Yeah. So that's, I'm making a point that if this isn't that hard, you can have. So I do intermittent fasting virtually every day. Me too. If I like stop eating at six, I won't eat again until eight or nine in the morning.

For me, sometimes it's like 11. I just don't have... I'm actually not advocating that if you work out or anything, but I sometimes am not hungry until... So if you can go 12 to 16 hours, it's been found to improve your memory, improve your mood, lose weight, your blood pressure is better,

and your inflammatory markers are better. So nightly, 12. So that's a piece of cake to do it. What it does is it prevents the nighttime eaters. And you don't want to be a nighttime eater because it gives you an increased risk of having a stroke and heart attack. Why? Because when we go to sleep, our blood pressure dips and it protects us from strokes and heart attacks. But if you ate right before bed, you're called a non-dipper

because your blood pressure doesn't drop. It stays high, which puts extra stress on your blood vessels. So you don't want to be a non-dipper. You want to be a dipper. And okay. So stop eating at night. And now I want to talk about foods to choose. So it's like, oh, I can't have this. I can't have that. It's like, stop it. You can have. I mean, just talk about some beverages. Like you can have water.

You can have sparkling water. You can have tea. You can have spa water. I found a kombucha that has super low sugar because most of them have like a ridiculous amount of sugar. I actually found one that has. Yeah. has super low sugar because most of them have like a ridiculous amount of sugar. I actually found one that has, yeah, I have one that has in a, in a 16 ounce bottle only has four grams of sugar, which means per serving it only has two, which is really good.

Um, and it's from the natural juice. Okay. So plenty to drink and everyone's now and I get sweet leaf. They make 10 different kinds of Stevia. I carry chocolate. See, when we went to Europe, we had four bottles of chocolate stevia and we just put it in coffee, put it in tea, put it in sparkling water, sparkling water. I would actually put it in steel cut oatmeal a little bit. And so I've not seen any health problems.

We were out somewhere. It was so cute. We were out somewhere and I've never seen this before. We were out somewhere and I was ordering something and I got my chocolate Stevia out and I was putting it in something

and there was an older man sitting at the table right across from me. At the same time, he got his chocolate Stevia out and was putting it in something and we both just started cracking up. And I'm like, I have never seen that before

so it made me wonder if he listens to our podcast did he ask you out really why is that the first thing you think of because i'm protecting because you because you would do that no because you would do that absolutely not um do you know how i know you would not do that? Because you would kill me. Yes. We're clear on that. Now that's actually recorded. Okay, we have beverages. Nuts, seeds, nut and seed butter.

Like almonds and Brazil nuts. Macadamia nuts. You have to be careful. They have high calories. But they also have a lot of special health benefits. So just go easy on them. Spassashios. Macadamia nut oil is really good for cooking.

We're going to get to oils. Pistachios. Pumpkin seeds. It's actually been found to boost dopamine in the brain. We talked about that. Walnuts. Quinoa, which is a seed. Beans are a little bit more controversial.

So my advice on beans, the softer beans are easier on digestion. The harder the skin on the bean, the harder it is on digestion. So the larger beans are actually harder, but softer beans like lentils are not nearly as difficult on digestion. They're good for you. We just recommend that you eat them in smaller quantities than people often do. So like a half cup at a time and not every day. And like you often say as a condiment. Right. As a condiment, not as your main staple.

And then fruits, there's all sorts of them, but you want them to be in general, low glycemic, high in fiber. So apples, apricots, avocados, but people go, Oh, that's not a fruit. It is, uh, blueberries, cantalots, avocados. People go, oh, that's not a fruit. It is. Blueberries, cantaloupe, cherries. Tomatoes are also a fruit. Lemons, peaches. I mean, there are just so many.

Tomatoes. And then vegetables. Just you want to make them as colorful as possible. Mushrooms. And then oils., avocado oil, coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, olive oil, but only at room temperature. And then healthy, sustainably raised meats. So there's meats, there's vegetables, there's fruit, there's nuts. One of the things I like and I've given this tip a lot, but I'm going to remind you because

it's just a great tip. When you need to wrap something quickly, especially for a kid's lunch, coconut wraps are amazing. You can find them on Amazon. You can find them at most grocery stores now. They just are so easy and it helps you eliminate bread and they're high fiber. And if you want to feel more focused, more protein and less simple carbohydrates, especially for breakfast, children who are taking Ritalin for ADHD do better in school and their medicine lasts longer if they are taking a high protein. So things like eggs with avocado and, you know, that kind of a breakfast is much better. So the protein with the healthy fat for breakfast is great.

Right. So if you had green tea and turkey, eggs, nuts, seeds, high protein veggies like broccoli and spinach. So I'm going to give you a little tip. One of the things that my daughter loves is cauliflower rice. We make it almost like fried rice. Okay. That's what it sort of tastes like, but it's just healthy.

Cauliflower rice with veggies in it. And then we put an egg over the top of it. It's amazing. And she's not getting the bad carbs. She's getting all the good carbs, the high fiber and the healthy fat and the protein. And it's like the perfect meal for her to get started. But if you tend to be a worrier and having trouble letting go of negative thoughts, if you go on a high protein diet, it actually helps you concentrate more on the things that

upset you. And so we recommend a serotonin-rich diet. So combining foods that contain tryptophan, tryptophan is the amino acid building block for serotonin, with foods that will raise your blood sugar just a little bit. So it's combining foods such as eggs and turkey, seafood, chickpea, nuts, and seeds. Those have a lot of tryptophan in them with healthy carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes or quinoa to elicit a short-term insulin response that actually can drive the tryptophan into your brain. So we want you to eat for your brain type. And I talk about that in the book. Okay.

Stay with us. When we come back, we're going to talk about supplements for your brain. Use the code podcast 10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.