Change Your Brain Every Day - Brain Scans: Who Needs it And When Should You Get One Done - Q&A Part 3

Episode Date: February 4, 2017

We are on our third episode for this series of questions and answers and in each episode, we hope that you're learning new things to help you be more aware and conscious about your brain health.  In today's discussion, we're going to answer a couple of questions on who and when should you get yourself a brain scan and why you need it specially during the advance years starting at 40.  Enjoy!  

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to the Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amen. 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.

Hi, Dr. Amen. I'm Ron. Where can I get a brain scan? You know, people ask me this as I travel all over the world, you know, where can you get a brain scan? And, you know, obviously I have four clinics, one in Newport Beach, one in San Francisco, one in outside of Seattle, and one outside of Washington, D.C. The point of this program is not to get a scan. The point of this program is this is the cool, exciting things that we've learned from the scans. And based on thousands of scans, I've developed a series of questionnaires to help people predict what their brain would look like if they could get a scan. Plus, I have a brand new online community. It's called The Amen Solution.

And on TheAmenSolution.com, you can test your brain. So we actually have a 40-minute sophisticated neuropsychological assessment you can do that will help you understand the health of your brain, mood, memory, attention, reaction time, processing speed, things like that. The imaging work we do will be standard maybe 10 years from now. For a lot of people, they don't want to wait that long. I mean, I know for me, I'm like, I need to know now. And so that's the next best way to know. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. My name is John, Dr. Raymond. How often should I get my brain checked? You know, John, I think people should get their brain checked yearly after the age of 50. Now, doesn't mean you have to get your brain scanned every year, but I think you should take the cognitive tests just to see if you're maintaining really good brain health or if it's beginning to slip.

Because the earlier you find out if it's beginning to slip, the more aggressive and effective we can be with treatment. Now, I think if you have Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia in your family, you should be checking by the age of 40. Thank you. Dr. Amen, my name is Chris. One of the things that I have a lot of trouble with is sleeping, getting a good night's sleep at night. Can you tell me, are there ways and things I can do to get a better quality of sleep? You know, sleep is so important. I actually talk about it as one of the warning signs that your brain is in trouble. And what I tell people is think about sleep

the same way you think about brain health. You want to avoid anything that hurts it and engage in things that help it. So what hurts sleep? Most of you know, right? Caffeine, alcohol. Now, alcohol surprises some people because, well, I use alcohol to go to sleep. Yes, but what happens with alcohol is it suppresses brain activity. When the alcohol wears off, the neurons

rebound, and it'll cause you to wake up at two or three in the morning. So getting rid of alcohol and caffeine, nicotine is a stimulant. So of course, that's smart to get rid of nicotine. Watching stimulating things at night or reading Stephen King before you go to bed, it's a really bad idea. Or even watching the news, because if you watch the news,

it's no end of scary, terrible murder, rape, fires, floods, the economy, whatever. So it's having that period of time to wind down. And then, unfortunately, in school, they never teach us how to manage our own feelings. So when many people go to sleep, they worry and they have these thoughts go over and over in their head. And so I've come up with rules for my patients to, when they go to sleep, you can't think about it, but you have to give them a way to do that. So you can't think about anything. So what I want you to do is whenever thought comes in your mind, imagine a big broom, sweep it away.

And I only want you to focus on one thing. Now, the people that cooperate and actually do what I ask them to, this works really well. I only want you to focus on the number one. Now, I don't care what color you make it. You can give it zebra stripes for all I care, make it 3D, neon, who cares. That's the only thing that you can focus on. And you get that worry that comes and your head, big broom, sweeps it away. Very helpful for my patient. If that doesn't work, on the amensolution.com, we have a hypnosis CD

that I do. All you have to do is listen to it. It puts you into a nice sort of meditative trance, calms you down. That doesn't work for you. Some people go, well, I have to work because they're oppositional and argumentative. And I'm like, okay, whenever you worry, if you just have to do it, why don't you keep a journal by your bed? Every time you have a bad thought, write it down. Write out what you can do about it, what you can't do it. But because they're oppositional, they will go to sleep rather than write anything down. And if that doesn't work, we make this wonderful supplement called restful sleep that's got five things in it to help you sleep. We affectionately term it at the Amen Clinics, the hammer, because it works really well. So the problem with sleep, 60 million Americans have sleep problems.

They go to their family doctor. We actually have one of my favorite family doctors here in the audience. Royce, tell me if I'm wrong about this. They go to their family doctor and in a seven-minute appointment, not him, but most of them, you go, I'm depressed and I'm not sleeping. You will leave with a prescription for an antidepressant and a sleeping pill. And I'm like, how crazy is that? Because these sleeping pills have side effects. People get depressed. They have memory problems. You know, their driving's not as good. It's like, let's be smart. Let's do the simple things first, and then let's start ramping it up to what you need. Thank you so much.

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.