Change Your Brain Every Day - ADD & Your Brain Type - Can Brain Trauma & Type Be Related & ADD Be Inherited?

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

ADD is predominantly inherited and genetically passed from one to another. Today, we're going to find out if brain trauma related ADD can be inherited as well.

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 Amen.

From Barbara. I have two questions I'm hoping you can answer. I tested his brain type 8. I can find nothing that explains the various types and or how they correlate to the ADD types. Please help clarify. So the ADD types are really for the people who have ADD. And there are seven types that I talk about in the course and talk about in Healing ADD

and you and I talked about on the show. As a way to get our work to a much broader audience than just as ADD, I created a simple brain health assessment that you can take for free on amenclinics.com. And it tells you what's your brain fit score, which is really how are your health habits and a brain type. And there's 16 types. And type eight actually does go along with ADD, which may be why you are in this course. It's people who are spontaneous, but they can struggle with focus and impulse control.

They tend to worry and be persistent. So each of these traits, their positive things and challenges, they can be very sensitive, but also sometimes sad. And they can be cautious, but also anxious. And so like you said, you are prepared. And you know, that's how you take your- No, I'm preparing for the end of the world. She's actually not kidding. But so that's brain type eight. And so if I took it over to, well, what would that be in our ADD typology? When you took the ADD type, likely it's over-focused, limbic, and anxious ADD. And it gets better. I mean, it's one of our most common. It's one of the most common brain types is type A. The second question is, I understand that ADD can either be genetic or

can be the result of brain trauma. Absolutely true. I'm wondering if the variety that results from brain trauma can be inherited. That's interesting. That's actually a really interesting question. My first thought is no, because it comes from brain trauma. And brain trauma doesn't change your genes. And then both Ken and I would go, well, do you know that for sure? Because there's this thing called epigenetics. Because it's the follow-up to that. So my father was seriously wounded on active duty, sustaining a severe head trauma. His injuries required 45 surgeries prior to discharge and numerous in following years.

However, he was able to lead a fairly normal life. I'm wondering if that type of trauma-related ADD can be passed down through the generations. It's just a fascinating question. What's happening is, so not the physical trauma didn't get passed down to your brain, but the stress and the anesthesia and the pain all changed his genes. That's what I was... And the changes is his genes. So it's actually called etching. So his genes became etched, changed with...

Well, not the genes became changed, but the... The information. Epigenes. Right. So the part above the genes became et, and then you inherited that stress. So I don't think in the course we actually talked about the mice study. You remember the mice study that they made afraid of the scent of cherry blossom. So every time cherry blossom scent would be in the air, they would shock the mice. And so the mice became afraid of the scent of cherry blossom. But it turned out their babies were afraid of the scent of cherry blossom.

That had never smelled of cherry blossom. And their grandbabies were afraid. So what happens in your life, you know, it's not just about you. It's really about generations of you. So when you think about kids growing up in war zones, like countries where there's constant war, they grow up with hatred and trauma. And before they're even taught about it, they're born with that. So there's a biological piece to what you inherited. And so if you find you're feeling anxious or you're afraid that it may not have anything to do with you. It may have something to do with one of your parents or even your grandparents or great grandparents, which I find

just so fascinating. And it's why you want to take care of your body and whatever psychological traumas you've had before you have kids. We really need to be teaching 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, teenagers this information. Oh, by the way, I have to brag. Can I brag? Yeah. About what? So we have a high school course. You may not know this. Oh, I was just going to say that. That's so funny. We have a high school course in 42 states and seven countries. It's been a huge passion of mine over the years. It started because my ninth grade daughter came home and she wanted help with quadratic equations. And then she wanted help with factoring. And I know this kid. She went to fashion school.

She was not going to be a rocket scientist. And I'm thinking to myself, why don't they teach her something practical, like how to balance a checkbook and how to care for her brain? And so right after the factoring discussion, I gave a lecture at the Orange County Department of Education because they love my work on brain health. And I'm like, you guys should do practical courses on brain health. And the superintendent said, would you help us? And so I did. And we created this course about 10 years ago. It's really good.

And then last year, we hired a high cost, an outside group to study our course in 16 schools on 335 kids. And what we found, the kids who took the course compared to the kids who didn't take the course, significant improvements in self-esteem and significant decreases in depression, drug, alcohol, and tobacco use. And the brain system checklist we give improves significantly. But I want to add something to that because I think personally, this is just my personal bias, I think one of the reasons that it does well is because it's actually fun. It's cool.

It's sort of cool. It's not stuffy and dorky. So I think it's actually kind of cool. And it teaches them to make a brain. So if you've not seen the video of me making a brain on Facebook, we pinned it to the top. Go look at it, and you'll never have more appreciation for how soft your brain is. My team just did a great job on that video. Okay, from Tanya, please explain the kind of technology you use to scan the brain.

Is it like a magnetic resonance imaging? We use a study called SPECT that looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. It's different than a CAT scan or an MRI. Those are anatomy studies. They show what the brain actually physically looks like. SPECT looks at function and it's really easy to understand. It looks at healthy activity, too little activity or too much. And then our job becomes we balance your brain. So one of my favorite ways that you explain this when it feels like it's getting, you know, kind of complicated for people, if you take a computer and you drop it, it might look fine on the outside. That's sort of what a CT scan looks like. It looks fine. But when you try to turn it

on, the electrical activity inside is completely messed up. The wiring got messed up. Something broke on the circuit. So that's what SPECT looks at is the activity patterns. So is it working fine on the inside when you turn it on? So, right? I like that. So a CT or an MRI of a dead brain looks like a brain. The SPECT scan of a dead person looks like a hole. The SPECT scan of a dead person looks like a hole. Right. It looks black. I think of SPECT as a leading indicator of trouble.

It's going to tell you when trouble is headed your way, as opposed to a lagging indicator, which by the time the anatomy of your brain is struggling, it's a lot harder to fix. That perfectly explains why so many people come to our clinics and they've had CT scans after they have been in a car accident or whatever. And they come to our clinics and we see on the scan, we're like, when did you have, you know, you say, you have to ask them 10 times. When did you have a brain injury? When did you have a brain injury? Never, never, never. Because they were told their CT scan is normal because it didn't show up with their pattern, with the activity patterns. But we can see with blood flow and activity

patterns that it's not okay. 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.