Change Your Brain Every Day - Are Energy Drinks Bad? Even if Sugar-Free? With Darin Olien

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

In the final episode in a series with Darin Olien, the host of the new Netflix show Down to Earth, he and the Amens tackle some of the most talked-about current issues in brain health and wellness. Some of the topics covered are the health factor of energy drinks, whether or not carbs are bad for you, the optimal times of day you should be eating, and where to get started on a new wellness journey. For more info on Darin's new book "SuperLife: 5 Simple Fixes That Will Make Your Healthy, Fit, and Eternally Awesome", visit https://www.amazon.com/SuperLife-Simple-Healthy-Eternally-Awesome/dp/0062297198 For more on Darin's new Netflix series "Down to Earth with Zac Efron", visit https://www.netflix.com/title/80230601

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. Welcome back, everyone. We're here with Darren Olin. And we've been talking about his book, Super Life, Down to Earth, his Netflix show with Zac Efron. So fun, so interesting. On a journey to help you be well and be able to live

your mission and your purpose, there's just no way to do that unless you take care of your brain and your body. So in this episode, some of our Instagram followers submitted questions that we're going to get Darren to help us with. So Darren, welcome back. Thanks for being with us. Hey, thank you. It's awesome to be here.

So the first question is, I'm ready to get fit. This is from Sarah. Where do I start? Well, I think that, I mean, I would just say, I mean, going for walks, getting outside is just extremely important. If you have that ability, moving your body

and also just not stacking it up is making it such a big deal. Because people, I think, overwhelm themselves right away. Like I got to start this big program. I got to, you know, sign up for this thing. It's going to be a financial commitment. And all of that could be true. But I think it's important just to, I mean, there's nothing more powerful than just walking and going outside and moving your body, taking in the sun and taking in the light and taking in the air. So I would just say, don't overwhelm yourself, get going and then reach out, reach out to

your network. Hey, what's working for you? What's working for you? What do you like? What do you guys want to join together on this thing like like try to create a little bit of a community because obviously when you have when you have other people that are doing the same things that you you have you have the ability to uh you know have responsibility for what you're doing so so i would say that. And then there's several opportunities for apps right now and YouTube videos to, to have a lot of, we, I created an app called one to one tribe where I

have a bunch of functional stuff on and recipes and everything else. And we give three days free on that. So, so I recognize that it's overwhelming for some people, but at the same time, don't make it overwhelming and move your body as much as you can. I love that. And one thing, if I could add to that, um, people will often write into me and say, but I can't because of X, Y, and Z and whatever the X, Y, and Z is. I always use two examples, Natalie, who's our social media director. And I believe you've been in contact with Natalie. Um, she is, she's just a warrior. I love that girl. She broke her neck when she was 16 and she's a quadriplegic and I, her workout will make people's heads spin.

So here's a girl in a wheelchair and she was told she'd never walk. And now she walks with a walker, but she swims and she, I mean, her workouts are intense. And my other friend, Jacob, who has cerebral palsy, who is wheelchair bound, but has the best attitude I've ever seen in life and got his black belt in Kampo. So whenever you think you can't do it, I just want you to think about all the people who can't do it, who do it anyways. And it doesn't mean you can do that thing. Find something to do.

If it's flapping your arms, just do something, right? It's find something to move your body. Exactly. All right. The next question from Caleb, should I stay away from carbs? Carbs just cause fat gain. Right. Wrong. But you'd mentioned in an earlier episode about carbs and they may not be the enemy. So I'd love your take on it. We talk about smart carbs versus dumb carbs. So carbs that increase inflammation, which are generally very high processed, high glycemic, pro-inflammatory carbs. But broccoli has carbs and spinach has carbs and bell peppers have carbs.

And so when people go after and demonize carbs, what's generally your response? I love carbs. And it's that whole food kind of principle. Listen, and you also have to understand that where people are at right now, there might be sensitivities, they might have already damaged their insulin, they might be pre-diabetic, they might be diabetic. So you have to be sensitive to where they're starting for sure. But carbs are definitely not the enemy in their whole food form. But when we start taking things out of their normal state, we start taking sugars out of their fiber antioxidant rich matrix that they are naturally in, then that starts to become a problem. For me, I eat literally a

bowl of fruit that has got three bananas and dates and blueberries and apples and peaches and plums. I literally just ate that before I got on here. There's a great book actually called Mastering Diabetes. It gets into heavy science behind there. There is starting to show that not only starting to show, showing that, you know, this high saturated fat can start thwarting and affecting this insulin sensitivity sensitivity and actually not being the carbs directly as we thought it was. So getting back to sense everything. So every food has protein, fats, carbohydrates, every single food. It's not food and creating this kind of, again, this demonizing approach to this carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, it's looking at the whole matrix. And if you stay with that common sense and not reduce it down and have chips as your carbohydrates and have all of this other processed stuff, which can definitely

cause problems and go back to whole food eating. It virtually can reverse many of the problems that people have created when they're not eating those kinds of things. So 50%, I mean, it's a number, it's this shocking statistic, but it comes from the Journal of the American Medical Association. 50% of Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. So 14% of us are diabetic, 36% are pre-diabetic, and both of us have people we love that were just ravaged with diabetes. And And diabetes actually skyrocketed right before the obesity epidemic. And it was correlated with the toxic load in our body. So if you poison an organ, like you poison the pancreas, you're much more likely to be diabetic.

But at the same time, managing your blood sugar, at least for us, you know, we think about low glycemic foods is probably a smarter way to go because your blood sugar won't vacillate as much as the, you know, pancake sugar load that you get. Yeah. And, and I think we underestimate exercise in this too. Sometimes, I mean, if you're pre-diabetic, I'm pre-diabetic by nature, but my blood sugar now is perfect. Um, but I work out every day and that's one of the best things you can do to increase insulin sensitivity besides your diet. I mean, with everything we're talking about that Darren's talking about critical, but exercise is also critical and moving your body. And it increases for the more muscle you have on your body, the more insulin sensitive you are. So it just,

it really helps to reverse that tide. So doing those together is very powerful. All right. From Linda, are energy drinks still bad if they are sugar free? That's a loaded question. Well, there's, there's so, there's so much to look at with, with that. I mean, energy drink and there's a certain there's some energy drinks starting to be like more holistic that are popping up too so it's hard to but if you're thinking about like the the the monster energy drinks and and and red bulls and all of this stuff yeah i mean sugar-based uh stimulants uh high caffe. Those are a really horrible way of trying to get energy. And again, your systems are compromised. So you're already behind the eight ball in terms of being able to

produce energy. The trick is that we are low in energy, so we seek energy. So we think that these things are a way out of our kind of depression of energy when in fact we have to kind of go back to nurturing our bottom line but yeah these things are not you know high amounts of caffeine are a big problem over a long period of time and adds a debt of stress that is extremely difficult and also inhibits the body's ability to repair. I worked with a stem cell, one of the leading stem cell doctors in the world, and over 100 milligrams of caffeine every day starts killing the top stem cells in the body called totipotent stem cells.

So sugar is poison. That isolated sugar is poison. And on top of it, high amounts of caffeine. It's just a prescription for disaster. Well, artificial sweeteners though, because when she said sugar, Oh yeah.

Yeah. Of course. Ucrulose and aspartame. Really bad. We're not good for you. All right. One more. When should I eat?

Do I need breakfast? And what do I eat after a workout? And this is from Kaylee. These are great questions. I mean, I think this one is, I tend to lean towards the centurions. I tend to lean towards that data. And I also tend to lean towards the data of Ayurveda, which is kind of the 20,000 years of use. And that is, aside from, I think fasting and intermittent fasting can be great, but kind of leaving that aside for the moment, I think that eat when you're hungry, coming out of, you know, sleeping. I definitely think, uh, being sensible around that being whole, whole food fruits and stuff and, and balance

whole foods is great during that time. And then eating a majority of your calories before noon and maybe having a lunch and then kind of dropping your calories because there's kind of this, this, this, uh this heat of digestion that's very powerful in the morning and as it goes up to about noon and about two o'clock it starts dropping off and the problem I think that I see is a lot of people flip that whole thing and don't eat much or drink their coffee and then at the end of the day they're so ravaged with hunger they slam all these calories in right before they're gonna go go to bed. And I think

that's a, that number one, you don't sleep well that way. And number two, it's just goes against kind of this metabolic curve that seems to be prevalent in kind of the circadian rhythm of metabolism. If you eat before bed, you also have a higher risk of a heart attack and stroke because you are a non-dipper. So I love that term, non-dipper. So for healthy people, if they stop eating at least three hours before bed, their blood pressure drops. And when your blood pressure goes down, you're at less risk for heart attack and stroke. But if you eat close to bedtime, that's stressful for the body. The body has to manage all of that. Your blood pressure does not dip before bed or when you're sleeping, putting you at risk for big trouble. So you don't want to be a non-tipper. What about the workout,

post-workout? Do you have a thought on that? I mean, I definitely think that, you know, I like to stress myself out sometimes and I'll fast afterwards a few hours. But for the most part, I like to eat something after a workout because typically I will fast a bit from the night before. Like I said, I probably am done eating by about five at night usually. And then I won't eat anything till after my workout for the first time and that's about 9 30 um so i love to eat and replenish uh with some great food after a workout and and i love again i love the fruit side of things and letting the body uptake all that glycogen that i just let that i just annihilated out of my system from the workout it's awesome awesome. Well, we are so grateful to meet you and look forward to spending time together

after the world becomes a little more normal. Darren O'Lean, his book is Super Life. You can see him on Netflix and his new show, Down to Earth with Zac Efron. It's really fun. It's fun. And we're grateful that you're bringing this information to the world. I mean, we need to be serious about our health if we want to keep.

And, you know, Tan often says, we can keep you alive for a long time. I was an ICU nurse. On ventilators. I know how we can keep you alive. But you're. I was an ICU nurse. On ventilators. I know how we can keep you alive, but you're not living. But you're not living. And we want you to stay alive for a long time with the quality of life.

Health span. So what did you learn? Write it down. Post it on any of your social media sites. Go to Brain Warriors Way podcast. Tag Brain Warriors Way podcast. tag Brain Warriors Way podcast, we'd be grateful or go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Leave us a comment, question, or review. And Darren, how can people find you? What's the easiest way for them to follow you find you? Why

don't you let them know? Yeah, so DarrenOlean.com has basically everything up there that I'm doing. Darren O'Lean on Instagram, Twitter, all of that stuff. Perfect. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, everybody. We'll be back.

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