Change Your Brain Every Day - ADD and Negative Thoughts-The Toxic Cocktail - Why They Shouldn't Go Together

Episode Date: March 16, 2017

Today's episode is part of an ADD coaching call that was recorded. My experience with ADD over decades now is many people with ADD use negative thinking, use fear as a way to stimulate their brains. So today, we're going to discuss this issue and answer a couple other questions about ADD. Watch out for part two of this coaching call. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to the Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amon.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Healing ADD coaching call. I am so grateful that you are on this call and that you're on this journey to be the best you can be. We have a special guest that's going to join us in about 10 or 15 minutes. But for now, I want to tell you what I've been thinking about. Then I'll get to your questions. There was a new study this week that said for people who had social anxiety, which is often very common, especially for type seven anxious ADD, that when they did an online program like Brain Fit Life, it wasn't Brain Fit Life, but when they did an online, it's called a CBT program, cognitive behavior therapy, which I think of as killing the ants, learning how to not believe every stupid

thought you have, that compared to people who don't have social anxiety, who are not nervous in social situations, who can get up in front of people and talk, no problem. So people who are anxious, they had more activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala. And the amygdala, I think it's Greek for almond. So there are these little almond shaped structures in your temporal lobe. So underneath your temples, behind your eyes, that the amygdala, which is an area of the brain that's responsive to fear. So people who are feeling afraid, so it makes sense that social anxiety people actually had larger, more active amygdala. And when they gave in to the negative thoughts, the fearful thoughts, the horrible thoughts, the fortune-telling thoughts of things

that are going to turn out badly, that the amygdala became more active. And when they learned to kill the ants, to decrease the automatic negative thoughts, that's ants, that the amygdala became less active and actually over time became smaller. So if you give in to the negative thoughts, you're actually making the fearful part of your brain stronger and more powerful. It is critical to not believe every stupid thing you think, to as we talk about in the videos and I write about in the workbook, to whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, out of control, you start writing your thoughts down and you question them. You ask yourself if they're true. Can you absolutely know that it's true? And by learning to have accurate thought, you actually have a healthier brain.

Now, why is that important on an ADD use negative thinking, use fear as a way to stimulate their brains. Now, if you have ADD, our experience from looking at thousands, about 20,000 people who have ADD looking at their brains, it's often associated with lower activity in the front part of the brain. And how do we treat it? From a medicine standpoint, we use stimulants. Why? Because it stimulates the front part of the brain. And when I was in training, we used to call it a paradoxical effect. Why would you ever give a hyperactive child a stimulant? I mean, it's a paradox, right? Because the stimulants would calm them down. Well, it's really not a paradox. What you're doing is you use the stimulant to increase low activity, and then their brain settles them down. Now, you've learned through healing ADD, ADD is not one thing. It's at least seven different

things. We talk about natural ways to help your brain. And one of the natural ways is to get your thoughts right. I don't want you just positive pie in the sky, happy thoughts. I'm not a fan. Because what that means, it can be snowing out and you drive 125 miles an hour down the freeway and you just, I'll be fine, right? So that's an example of a positive thought that, or, you know, hey, there's, you know, the eighth slice of pizza I'm going to have and then, oh, it won't really affect my health, won't really affect my weight. No, that's the kind of positive thinking that kills people. I want you to be an accurate thinker. So just something that was on my mind. Let me get to the questions from Linda. I'm wondering if there is any possible role for chiropractic adjustments in improving my memory. Now, I'm going to just

start with, I'm a huge fan of my chiropractor. So I actually have two and I love them both. And I actually did a study with cranial sacral therapy. So if you actually feel your skull in a quiet moment, you will actually feel the bones in your skull pulse. And you have to get really quiet to feel it, and it's a little weird. But there's something called cranial sacral therapy that has been shown in some cases to be helpful for ADD. So I'm a fan. Other adjustments,

adjusting your neck, adjusting your back, I don't think that would have any effect on your memory unless you're out of adjustment and you're in pain. And obviously, pain can negatively impact your ability to think and your adjustment. And our special guest has come to join us. Hello. Sorry, I'm coming in a little late. I have a little one. You're not late.

Oh, good. I told them that a special guest would come to join me. Very fun. And here you are. So excited to be with you guys tonight. I never said ADD people are late. I have a child to take care of. Those of you moms know what I'm talking about. Well, it's just interesting. And I'm not talking about this time

because sometimes our calls are at 5.15 and sometimes they're at five and there is just some confusion. And this is actually not true of you. No, it's not. But many people who have ADD have trouble being on time. Right. And they do because they actually don't start getting ready to go until they're late. So I'm the opposite. Tell them the truth. I drive you crazy. When we travel together, which we do a lot, I'm obsessed with... Well, and one of the questions we're going to get to later is somebody has four types of ADD and they're like, oh my goodness, what do I do? And that's actually really common. And we talk about the one you have, it's over-focused and anxious. Right. Which keeps me very on time, but makes everyone else a little psychotic around me.

I have a ritual. I want to be at the airport an X amount of time before my flight leaves. And I'm like freaked out that there might be traffic in my head. I've got a list of things that could go wrong that might make us late. So we need to leave. Did I tell you, I was just telling them about this new study I read where they took people with social anxiety disorders. And when they gave in to the negative thoughts, it actually activated their amygdala. Yeah, but I don't see that as a social. And it made it bigger. And after they did the ant therapy,

it calmed down their amygdala and it made it smaller. But I like being early, so I don't see that as a social problem. I like it. So you have to see it as a problem. If you like your anxiety, keep it. Personally, I never liked mine. It's only a problem for him.

All right. We're on question number two. Okay. How would you help someone heal from OCD? So OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder. And like ADD, it's not one thing. Now, typically, what the imaging findings for OCD is there's too much activity in the front part of the brain. So you have trouble letting go. It's like the brain's gear shifter gets stuck and you can't shift. So some of my OCD patients, they would get stuck on washing their hands or they'd get stuck on

checking locks or they were very ritualistic in their behavior. And sometimes, I think it was my first OCD patient, she was like an 83-year-old, very proper Christian woman who would just get these really dark sexual thoughts and they would go over and over again. So sometimes the brain works too hard and we use interventions that raise serotonin. So SSRI, medication, 5-HTP, St. John's wort, saffron, things like that. Can I ask a question? Because I actually find

this very interesting. I think people use this word OCD sometimes when they're not always referring to it. I want to make sure we're talking about like really clarifying this. I hear so many people use the word OCD when they're very sort of uptight and rigid about doing things a certain way, but they're not necessarily like checking locks, you know, the ritualistic type of OCD. Right. So there's obsessive compulsive personality disorder. So this is the person where things have to be a certain way or they get upset. They have 14 blue suits, but they're highly functional and it doesn't impact. Right. Or things have to be cleaned a certain way or they'll focus on the one thing out of place as opposed to someone who has those rituals. So the reason I want to clarify that is because I

know a lot of women who are more women than men that I know who sort of have that hot brain where it's like they, you know, cleaning is an outlet. God bless them. Cleaning is an outlet for them, but it's got to be done a certain way. So they can't hire someone. They've got it. They're just very intense. And I have a really cute, quick story because I know we have to move on. But this is so fascinating.

Happened today. Someone we know that actually works for us. So when she started working for us, she came to work for us because she loves our work and because it's helped her and her family so much. But when her original scan was just hot as could be on fire, like on fire, crazy, rigid, that singlet was like, you know, if things don't go her way, she just obsesses about it, you know, she was one of those sort of OCD personalities. Well, I'm not saying you should get divorced. You certainly, that is not what the show is about, but she was in a very stressful and abusive marriage at the time. And she kept telling everybody, I think that's what it is. And of course, you know, most people are like, yeah, no. But anyway, she got divorced and now it's five years later and she's in a job she loves and she's got, you know, her life has settled down and her scan today was totally settled. There's no singular. It's not on fire at all. Like it's calm. It's normal. And so it's just very interesting how, but she does everything else right too. She eats right and she's sleeping and she, I mean, she's doing everything. She

exercises, she does everything. But the point being that over those five years, when she got rid of the stress in her life, it really settled everything down. I just thought it was interesting. You can change your brain. And when you do, you change your life. So the treatment protocols for OCD, I had a little boy who had it, and it turned out he had something called appendus syndrome. Stands for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep infections. So if you get strep throat as a nurse, you've got to treat that because it could cause rheumatic heart disease. Well, we now know that antibodies to the strep bacteria for some people causes them to go and attack their brain. And they can have new onset OCD.

Lyme. So whenever I hear OCD, for me, I want to scan the person to go, am I working with a brain that works too hard or one that's not hard enough? I've certainly seen that with people who have OCD. Checkers, people who are constantly checking, tend to have brains that work too hard. Hoarders, they can never let anything go, tend to have brains that are really low in activity. And I actually think they have a form of ADD and they just can't organize themselves so they repeatedly hold on to things. So think of natural ways to boost serotonin. That could be one thing as a treatment. There's also a

treatment called TMS or transcranial magnetic stimulation. So once we scan someone here at Amen Clinics, we can actually deliver magnetic pulses to certain areas of the brain to either increase it or decrease it. There are certain kinds of behavior therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder, like you know you have to check locks, I have to check locks, I have to check locks. Well, actually preventing yourself from checking them, you get anxious, anxious, anxious,

and then it begins to settle down. So not giving in to the behavior. So I'm assuming meditation would be really helpful. The meditation can be helpful as well. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics.

I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.