Change Your Brain Every Day - A Limited Series: Take The Brain Health Challenge

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

In this new limited series of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you lessons from their acclaimed live class and brain health challenge. Each week, Daniel and Tana will discuss how you can get your brain right, no matter where it’s at right now. This first episode highlights how a simple revolution in brain health is changing everything.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you

and we hope that you will join us in the challenge. Welcome to the end of mental illness, brain health revolution challenge. I'm so excited and I'm so proud of you. I am so I'm so excited and I'm so proud of you. I am so happy to be here and I'm so proud of you. I think this is your most important book yet, The End of Mental Illness. So I'm just very proud of you and I'm very excited to be here doing this with you tonight. Well, thank you so much.

And there's like 1,100 people watching. That's great. We're really excited. And when I thought about this is a new year, but it's really a new decade. And our goal at Amen Clinics is to create a revolution in brain health. So the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health. And that's what I'm just so excited about. And if we're going to end mental illness, we need brain health revolutionaries. And those of you who've been following us for a long time, you know, Tana and I do a podcast called the Brain Warriors Way podcast because you're in a war for the health of

your brain. Everywhere you go, someone is trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early. And so what we're going to do over the next six weeks is we're going to actually give you something to do every day, five, 10 minutes max, that'll create this revolution in brain health in you and in those people you care about. And I think what I really like about it is

you're not saying that this is the end of people experiencing challenges, but it's the end of the way we talk about it, the way we treat it, the stigma around it, how we think about mental health challenges as opposed to stigmatizing and labeling people, correct? No, we're going to get to what I mean by the end of mental illness, because? No, we're going to get to what I mean by the end

of mental illness, because quite frankly, these things aren't mental. They're brain. And if you don't understand that distinction, it hurts people. So let's get to it. And as I open the end of mental illness, what I say is mental health issues affect all of us. Either you've personally struggled with a mental health issue or you love someone who has. No one escapes. And the incidence of these problems is skyrocketing with the deaths from drugs, alcohol, and suicide at their highest level in recorded history. And you know that. I do.

So I almost canceled my first date with you because you were a psychiatrist. I mean, besides the fact that I didn't want to be psychoanalyzed. You know, I had been hurt by a psychiatrist. People in my family had been hurt by a psychiatrist. My grandmother was horribly hurt by a psychiatrist. And in my family had been hurt by a psychiatrist. My grandmother was horribly hurt by a psychiatrist. And I just- She was actually diagnosed with schizophrenia. And given electric shock therapy, she had a nervous breakdown and it was hormonal, we think.

And she had terrible PTSD. And diabetes. And she was part of the starvation- The Great Famine. The Great Famine in Lebanon. Right, when, yeah. In Greater Syria. In 19...

19, well, she was born in 1910. It was around 1915 to 1918, something like that. It was during World War I. Yeah. And we know through epigenetics that that starvation, that famine can actually affect three generations of people. Oh, man. And it affected her entire life. I mean, it really was traumatizing. Right. And so her PTSD, hormonal challenges, diabetes manifested as psychosis for a time. She ends up with this label, schizophrenia, which is way more complicated than that.

So both of us know about this, but if you're tuned in, odds are you know about it too. But what we've learned at Amen Clinics over the last 30 years is that most psychiatric illnesses are not mental health issues at all, but rather they are brain health issues that steal your mind. And this one idea changes everything. Get your brain right and your mind will follow. So let me say that again. Get your brain right and your mind will follow. So let me say that again, get your brain right and your mind will follow. Now at Amen Clinics, we've been doing brain imaging on our patients for 30 years, despite intense opposition from my colleagues. But I'm like, how do you know unless you look? If you don't look, you don't know. We really need to stop lying about that. And the imaging just changed everything for me. And we'll talk a little bit about it as we go along, but I really want people to get this one idea, get your brain right, and your mind will follow.

And so often I say, you know, this is not a psychiatric problem, it's a brain problem. And when the brain is better, you're better still. Your brain can have problems just like your heart can have problems. So next week, I have a very special announcement. Are you just teasing people? I'm just teasing people. But one of my young celebrities, he wouldn't take his medicine. And just know clear, we're not opposed to medication for a brain health issue. That'd

be like, well, you're opposed to medication for a heart issue or you're opposed to medication for a liver problem. It's like, no, we're not opposed to medication. We're just opposed to that's the first and only thing you do without any biological information. But anyways, he needed medicine and he's like, no, I don't want to because there's all this controversy about psychiatric medication. And he's like, no, I don't want to because there's all this controversy about psychiatric medication. And then he came into my office one day and he'd been scanned and he said, your brain can have problems just like your heart can have problems. And do you know that most people who see cardiologists, so both you and I have seen a cardiologist, we love him, have never had a heart attack.

That they're actually there to prevent them. What a concept. That's what I see for psychiatry. must develop a similar way of thinking where we know the brain's risk factors and we go attack them as soon as possible. So I have heart disease in my family. So I know I'm at risk, but I don't have heart disease. Why? Because I do all the things to prevent it. I mean, I walk the mall today. I hate to be thought of as a mall walker, right? It's like- Chloe will never let you live it down. So what are some of the risk factors? And we're going to talk about a lot of them over the next

six weeks. So for example, if teenagers sleep just one hour less than their peers- One hour. They have higher rates of depression and suicide. Yeah, it's crazy. If you have gut health issues, and I remember when you and I first met that you had gut issues and it's like, well, that doesn't have anything to do with your mind. Yeah. That it's associated with anxiety, insomnia, and brain fog.

And you told me when you were little, you had upper and lower. Upper and lower GIs when I was four years old. I mean, that's kind of crazy. And then I asked you, well, what happened when you were four years old? And then I went, oh, here we go. You're psychoanalyzing me. This is nonsense. It started two weeks after my uncle was murdered.

Yeah. So let's say that so they can actually hear it. It started two weeks after your uncle was murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. So maybe that has nothing to do with the unhappy gut bugs. I thought it had nothing to do with it. If you have Lyme disease, we're going to talk about that a lot. It can actually cause people to become angry, depressed, even psychotic. That's wild. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast,

please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.