Change Your Brain Every Day - Can an Underdeveloped Cerebellum Cause You To Struggle in School or Work? PT. 3 with Wynford Dore

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

Many struggles that children or adults face in school or work are the result of an underdeveloped cerebellum. The good news is that you can increase blood flow to the cerebellum through a process called vestibular stimulation. In the third and final episode of Cerebellum Week, Dr. Daniel Amen and Wynford Dore discuss which of these activities will help the most with vestibular stimulation.

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. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. So welcome back. So this is our last episode of cerebellum week. I am here with Winford door. Uh, he is the author of stop struggling in school. Um, also the creator of the Zing program, www with zing.com. Uh, I have been fascinated by his work and we're beginning to do some research together here at Amen Clinics.

And we've talked about some sort of severe cases like Susie and Nina's son. But I also believe that if you want to optimize your performance, the first thing to do is optimize your cerebellum. Absolutely. The cerebellum is the key. I mean, why not go with 50% of the brain to start? Yeah, the cerebellum is so misunderstood, but so are the people who have an incompletely developed cerebellum so misunderstood. So the vast majority of children that I see struggling in school, as my book talks about, is children that don't read very much. They can't concentrate for long. And teachers often wrongly assume they're choosing not to be concentrating or they're assuming that they're

not intelligent. We have to stop with that because it's so important. So many people, when a child struggles or an adult struggles, they think they know why and they label them as bad or unmotivated or don't care. I cannot tell you the thousands of people who come to the clinic and I go, well, what did your teacher say about you? If only you tried harder, you'd do better. And in fact, what we've seen with the images is the harder many people try, the worse it gets. I just saw a girl yesterday who's a world famous person who, when she tried to concentrate, her cerebellum deactivated along with her frontal lobe deactivated. And there is no amount of shaming.

There's no amount of belittling her. There's no amount of smacking her because she'd been fairly severely abused. There is no amount of that that is going to help her, that we need to look. I mean, that's what we do is we need to look and then we need to rehabilitate. Yeah absolutely so if you've got a child that's misunderstood have a look at the cerebellum and find out if any aspect of the cerebellum is not yet developed because that will probably explain it

and the irony is very often the brighter the fundamental part of the brain is, the less developed the cerebellum is. So you often get these strange situations where you've got savants and highly autistic people who are genius at something, but totally incapable of others. A complete eccentricity. Asperger's the same. And that's what we see. It's a classic autism pattern on scans. They're hyperfrontal, which means their frontal lobes work too hard and their cerebellums are cold. They're just low in activity.

I'm actually sitting here. I've been with Dr. Amen this morning and I can hardly sit down because I'm so excited about the quality of the data. I believe that the brain scan methods that you are using could transform the effectiveness of psychiatric conditions and all sorts of learning things too. I know what I'm doing is already extremely good, but I know you're going to help me make it hugely better. And that so excites me. There's so, you know, one in five children are struggling,

misunderstood, underperforming, and the chances are they might go right through life underperforming. One in a hundred will become a millionaire and do something, even though they drop out of school, as nearly all the billionaires have done. Why is that? Why is our education system not understanding that? Because it's a brainless education yeah well system what if we educated people to optimize their brain you know what a concept but so if someone's intrigued they can get your book stop struggling in school they can go to with zing and get get a copy for the teacher as well because often it's the teacher that's holding the child back because the teacher doesn't understand.

So what are some of the practical things our listeners can do to optimize their vestibular systems and their cerebellums? Because if you are struggling or you just want to be your best, because I know a lot of professional athletes use this program. Oh, yeah, they do. But let's give people just things to think about. I often talk about it on the Brain Warriors way that I play table tennis at a really high level because I think of it as one of the best brain games. You've got to get your eyes, your hands, and feet all to work together while you think about the spin on the ball and it's a strategy game. And you're right, table tennis is great for that

because you've got a lot of vestibular stimulation, a lot of eye movement, a lot of coordination happening all at the same time. That's great. Brain training games, however, on the other hand, you're staring at the computer, you might be moving the mouse a bit, no vestibular stimulation. They will not create any significant lasting change in the brain. In fact, the potential is that they will actually stifled further

development you know I've got a grandson and I'm pestering him all the time to reduce the the screen time he spends get him outside get the kids outside get them climbing and jumping and doing all of the things that that will stimulate their vestibular so increased exercise exercise, physical exercise is critical. As long as it doesn't increase the risk for concussions. Oh, yeah. So we're not hitting soccer balls with our head, right? We're not playing tackle football.

We need to protect the brain. And if you did, like I did, you need to rehabilitate your brain. So a huge, and you said something interesting this morning, that the trampoline can actually be really good as long as they don't get a concussion being crazy on the trampoline. Trampolining is great. Be safe with it. So is things like ballet. So anything where there's significant amounts of balance.

Now, the irony is that things like skiing and windsurfing and so on, these are actually very good exercises, but it doesn't activate the whole of the cerebellum. It's very good for some aspects of vestibular, that's balanced stimulation, but it doesn't do them all. So don't expect any of these sports to do everything. And that's why I put together a comprehensive program that systematically goes through every different type of vestibular stimulation and every different type of important coordination and put them together in a systematized way but every exercise you get your child to do will make a difference so I wonder if you know about the study from I think it was from, where they looked at 90,000 people.

Yeah. And they looked at who did what exercise and how long did you live? And so people who lived the shortest with soccer and football, American football. Runners, it actually didn't extend their life it was pretty interesting that people swimmers extended their life but people who played racquet sports lived the longest Wow and I think of all of those racquet sports yeah actually activate the cerebellum almost more than anything else. But what do you think about running and activating the cerebellum? My thought is,

but I'd love your thought, is, well, not much because it's sort of automatic. It's completely automatic. And you're generally going in pretty much a straight line. So there's actually relatively low levels of vestibular stimulation in that. With table tennis, you are jumping around from side to side and going back and forward. You're giving every type of stimulation possible every split second to your cerebellum. Running is good maybe for your cardio and so on. But in terms of vestibular stimulation, it's not going to do much. And so walking wouldn't really do very much for vestibular stimulation.

No, walking's not. Unless you're doing an obstacle course or something like that. Pool and things like that, they're fun, but they're not going to help your brain that much. Interesting. All right, so what are some of the exercises people can do for vestibular stimulation. Well, if you actually look in my book, we actually give a load of free exercises away, things you can do. And they're things like getting your child to balance on one leg and then shutting one eye.

Be careful when you do that so they don't hurt themselves. Because the more you can stand on one leg and then shut your eye, yeah, try it. Dr. Raymond is. Oh, now I'm out of the thing. Now when I shut both eyes, it begins to wobble. Yeah. It's actually how long you can keep your eyes closed on one leg determines your brain's age. Exactly. Well, you can bring your brain's age down.

So I used to practice one leg. How long can I stand? Yeah. You can actually bring your brain's age down. So if your child is, say, 10 years of age and can only stand on one leg with his or her eyes closed for about 10 seconds, if they can only do that, then they've got some more development they've got some more potential you're waiting to discover so that's a kind of general rule of thumb so standing on one leg is great getting them to spin around is is another thing getting them to jump on one leg and spin in a jump around in a circle and then get them to shut one eye whilst they do that any exercise that involves jumping spinning spinning, standing on one leg,

especially with your eyes closed, all of those are going to force the vestibular to be exercised, which in turn forces this electrician at the back here, the cerebellum, to do some more fundamental wiring. Do you think that's why autistic kids tend to flap or spin as an attempt to try to stimulate that system? Well, it's interesting. I think there's some inhibition things going on there as well, which is a slightly different issue. So they've got reduced control to stop things happening.

But many autistic children come alive if you take them to a fun fair. If they go round and round or going up and down, they're smiling. But many autistic children come alive if you take them to a fun fair. If they go round and round or going up and down, they're smiling. They're often, not always, but they're often at their happiest when they've got huge amounts of vestibular stimulation. Or if you take a young child that's autistic into a swimming pool and you throw them up and down in the water, they love it. So you get more happiness, more joy when the vestibular is stimulated, the cerebellum is doing its job, and their whole brain comes alive and it's functioning more normally. And the people who would benefit from Zing,

there's so many kids, and Chloe, my 14-year-old, who I adore, when I scanned her, very busy frontal lobes, very quiet cerebellum. And she's not an huge potential, then huge potential, not in any way autistic. But, um, knowing that is we knew why she would quit when she started a sport, if she wasn't perfect. So this hyper frontal often goes with perfectionism, which she's clearly clearly has and so when she saw it she's like okay i understand why i have to do coordination exercises and dance

made a huge positive difference for her i am trying to get her to do zing so it's well children do not always listen to their parents no and it's it's not it's not as easy as taking a pill but it develops naturally and in a lasting way the kind of thing that's going to make a lifelong difference when you think like when you run when you learn to ride a bike you don't do it in a second You might know what to do because you've watched people riding a bike. But until you've practiced and practiced and practiced, you can't ride. You fall off. When finally the cerebellum has done its job and made all of those coordinative links, you can get on a bike without thinking about it

and ride automatically. Oh, so many kids who are anxious about riding a bike or learning how to swim often have an underdeveloped cerebellum. And if you go through the program, and the program is 10 minutes twice a day, and often after a month people notice significant benefit. They do. But you recommend they do it for about six months. Yeah. Look, it's not a quick thing.

It's 10 minutes twice a day for six months. But if you've got a child struggling at school, if you've got a child that's got potential and no one is finding it, do you really want them to go right through their life without discovering it? Right, I mean, six months is like a drop in the bucket. Absolutely.

And one of the interesting things, I know that your partner is also very interested in diet absolutely and nutrition there's studies on gluten yeah turning off the cerebellum yeah uh there's actually a spec study with gluten turning off the cerebellum wow and in another study 40 of people with cerebellar dyspraxia, so that's where the cerebellum's not working, is from a gluten sensitivity. Wow. And that's why so many of our autistic and ADD kids do better when we get rid of gluten and dairy. So, well, thank you so much for being part of Cere Beller Week here on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I want everyone to look at, you can get it on Amazon right now, Stop Struggling in School. Go to withzing.com to learn about it. Stay tuned here. We'll talk more about it as we get our research projects underway with Winfrey Doerr. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.