Change Your Brain Every Day - Are Food Sensitivities to Blame for Anxiety or Depression?

Episode Date: September 13, 2017

Did you know that food sensitivities can also trigger psychological responses, such as anxiety, depression, or ADD? Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss food sensitivities and the brain, the efficiency of testing, and what you can do at home to get help fast.

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, everybody. Today, we're going to talk about something I talk about with virtually all of my patients, and that is, do you have food sensitivities that are causing issues with anxiety, depression, attentional problems, hyperactivity, behavior problems? It's amazing. Food can do that.

Food is medicine. Or it's poison. Or it's poison. And it can devastate your intestinal tract. It can devastate your skin. And it can devastate your mind. So one of the things we need to clarify before we get too far, because I get this question all the time on Facebook. How often? So all the time. It's one of the, like, it's a common question is, um, what if I'm sensitive to this food or more commonly I did the food sensitivity test and I'm allergic to like 26 or 34 foods.

Okay. So this, and so I can't eat half of what's in the recipes that I'm supposed to, you know, like that are, are that I'm given for what I'm supposed to be eating. I can't eat those foods. So what can I replace the food sensitivity testing, you know, for a number of years and getting rid of the foods that people said they were, it just didn't seem to make a big difference. Well, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, if you're allergic, well, that's the only thing we have to do. We have to clarify

food allergies from food sensitivities. There's a big difference between food allergies and food sensitivities. And the second thing is if you are sensitive, you get a list that shows up with 30 foods or 20 something plus foods, and you eliminate all of those foods when in fact you don't necessarily need to be, and those tests aren't, haven't been shown to be valid or fully accurate yet. Um, what you could be doing is creating nutritional deficiencies where there might not have been one. And what you really need is a gut healing program. So not necessarily to eliminate all of those foods. So, um, you need to do a food journal. You need to get a real assessment done. And so let's make this really simple. First understand food allergies. Let's start there. So, so if you get hives,

right, if you can't breathe, so people have shellfish allergies. And that's an IgE test. Then it's critical to stay away from those foods. And that's called an IgE test or immunoglobulin E. That is you can get a skin prick test or a blood test. That's serious. It means you need to stay away from them. So you get rashes, you get hives, your throat swells, stay away from those foods. That's like not kidding.

Um, but if you get some sort of vague symptoms, you're not sure about, and you go to someone that does a food sensitivity test on you, um, they're pretty expensive. They're not covered by insurance. It's called an IgG test. They are used for autoimmune disorders a lot of times. What that's going to indicate is, are those proteins from those foods, are there proteins from certain foods, undigested proteins crossing your intestinal lining? Are they in your bloodstream somehow? Okay. And that's where this idea of I'm sensitive to foods, what it really

is showing where it is useful is, okay, there's, um, intestinal, uh, you've got intestinal permeability or leaky gut problem is when, when those companies have been, uh, tested when, when like say samples from the same person, we send this, we send two samples from the same person to two different labs, or we send the same sample, like we divide the same sample and we send this we send two samples from the same person to two different labs or we send the same sample like we divide the same sample and we send it to the same lab label it with different names they get two different results or sometimes someone has a serious food allergy and it doesn't even show up so the test retest reliability is not there and it's expensive so we are generally not a fan of food sensitivity tests. And neither are most of our friends. We're a huge fan of the issue of food sensitivities. Right. And we believe that there

are certain foods that you should eliminate at least on a trial basis. And journal. And, you know, neither one of us are a fan. We're not a fan of gluten. We're not a fan of dairy. We're not a fan of corn and we're not a fan of sugar or soy. We're just not a fan because we don't see enough nutritional benefit for the potential risks. And we write a lot about that in our book, The Brain Warrior's Way. We're not alone on this concept. So most of our friends in the functional medicine field, even Dr. Weil is not a fan of these tests, Dr. Houston, Dr. Philaday, they would really prefer that you do what we do. Dr. Philaday works for us at our clinics. Get a thorough assessment, do your food journal if

you really think something, you suspect something's not working for you and then challenge it. So in other words, eliminate it. We explain how to do a food elimination diet or challenge, if you will, very thoroughly and in detail in the Brain Warriors way, or you can call the clinic and get an assessment. Well, and I'll just tell you, it's really simple. It's eliminate from your diet for about a month gluten, so wheat, and the other things that have gluten, barley. Dairy. Oh, you're talking about the gluten. Yeah, what else? So we actually would recommend you eliminate most grains. And if you don't want to eliminate them all, then the ones that are non-gluten, sort of like oatmeal.

If you don't want to do everything all at once, then don't worry about oatmeal to start. Or eat quinoa, even though it's not a grain, it's a seed. People use it like a grain. Or rice. There's not very many allergies to rice. But if you can eliminate gluten and things that contain gluten, even cosmetics will have gluten

in it. So it's important to read labels. So gluten, dairy, soy, corn, sugar, along with that artificial dyes and sweeteners. This is not hard. It's really, it's a mindset thing. And in the Brain Warriors way cookbook virtually all of Tana's cookbooks 130 recipes are not made with any of those ingredients so people go oh well there's nothing to eat and I'm like no there's 10,000 things to eat no one's ever taught you right uh how like coconut wraps and um and if you if you do that for a month

and you don't notice any change in your symptoms and you're serious about it you're sort of you know not cheating about it um then you know maybe that's not the cause of the issues you're struggling with maybe it's something else but i have to tell you half the cause of the issues you're struggling with. Maybe it's something else. But I have to tell you, half, 50% of the patients we see who go on an elimination diet have a significant reduction in their symptoms. In one study from Holland with 300 kids who had ADD, 72% of them lost their add symptoms just with diet just with diet alone so this is a very important topic and people go well what what do you eat and so so i made you eggs this morning right and then i had a cup of frozen blueberries. I think of them almost like God's candy.

Right. I had a big salad with salmon on it. So we've got 125, 130 recipes in the Brain Warrior's Way, 125 recipes in the Omni Diet that follow exactly. And they taste amazing. And let me just clarify one thing. So we have people do this as a quote unquote elimination or challenge initially. Most people end up feeling so much better.

They never go back. Right. So talk about Angie. Hold on. I will. Let me finish. But the truth is, this is how we live. Now, once in a while we may engage, we may have a little bite of bread or something like

that, but that's not the, where we live normally. Okay. So we eat that way all the time. And that's why there's so many recipes for you to find and use that we've created that I've created for you to be able to do this. So Angie, Angie lost 103 pounds over 14 months. She lost 11 pounds in the first two weeks. She was amazing, but it wasn't just the weight. And that's often what happens when people have food sensitivities that are causing inflammation and water retention. So the first two weeks are often like amazing. Right. So if you are inflamed, think about inflammation causing, inflammation causes problems with just about every organ in your body. So it's inflammation. It's like a flame. It's like this like, you know, chronic problem you've got going organ in your body. So it's inflammation. It's like a flame. It's like this, like, you know, chronic problem you've got going on in your body, swollen joints. She had female

problems. She had skin problems, but it was anxiety and depression that were ruling her life. So after doing this program, you know, 103 pounds later, 14 months, and now it's been several years and she hasn't gained it back. She can't imagine ever going back. But she's a warrior. She's a warrior. She can't imagine going backwards. So if she even starts to like gain a few pounds, she gets really uncomfortable because you know, in her mind it means, Oh, I have to be serious. So she'll write to me and she's like, okay, I like gain. You know, I'm the same way. Right. If I gain a few pounds, I'm like, I'm not happy about that. Right. And that's okay.

Right. With two thirds of Americans overweight. Well, and she's been miserable. 40% obese. And as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. It's the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States. It's okay to be anxious. Well, and so Angie, it wasn't even the weight that was the best part for her. Although it was, I mean, obviously,

because along with that, she had been ridiculed most of her life. So now she got her confidence back socially. She was so much happier, but the skin cleared up. Her female problems cleared up. Her joint pain was gone. So that inflammation goes away. Your gut heals. So her gut healed. Now her, you know, your gut bacteria gets better. So, and you know, I mean, you're the one who talks all the time about the importance of gut bacteria for brain health, her anxiety and depression were gone. So she said once in a while, she'll notice like it creeps in, but it no longer rules her life and she knows how to get rid of it.

She can get it under control. And that's really exciting. So food is helping you or it's hurting you. If you haven't read the Brain Warriors Way, we just encourage you to do it. I mean, we worked really hard to make it easy to read, full of great actionable ideas. And then the Brain Warriors Way cookbooks, the perfect companion to it. And the thing I love about it is the recipes taste awesome and they're good for you. You can do this. None of this is hard and it just takes the right mindset. You're a warrior. You're arm prepared and aware to win the fight of your life. Stay with us.

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