Change Your Brain Every Day - Can Cats Increase Your Happiness?

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss some of the cutting edge, brain-centric news items and studies. Some of the topics explored in this episode are the brain effects that come with being a cat owner, what exercise can do to proteins in the brain, and the harmful effects of certain fungi in your gut and what to do to eradicate them. 

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. We are talking about brain in the news in this episode, but before we get into brain in the news, we have some winners to announce. And also make sure you go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Leave us a comment, review, questions, and make sure you

go to social media, tag us, and share this episode. Tell us what you've learned. So the first winner is Merrill64. And if you did the review on iTunes, we actually don't have your contact information. So make sure to go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and give us your contact information in the contact section. So if you are Meryl64, go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and let us know. Yeah.

And she writes in, wow, my mama, 83, has dementia. I'm so concerned about developing this myself. I'm learning so much about brain health through this podcast. I can't put into words how much I've learned. Thank you, Cheryl. Awesome. The other winner is Becca underscore Soak, S-O-K. I've loved listening to this podcast

and learning so much about brain health and how to help your body heal naturally. Highly recommend this podcast. If you're wanting to change. Love that. Thank you so much. So what have we got?

Well, I have to talk about a study that came out this morning. Oh, what? And so first thing I did, what I woke you up with. Oh thing you know this is what i get woken up with i'm like did you know that what happens when you're nerds cats oh yeah that's right increase happiness except when he barfs up hairballs on my new furniture. They increase happiness. So petting your cat, training your cat, even feeding

your cat, probably not so much doing the kitty litter box, has been shown to increase blood flow to the front part of the brain, especially the underside of your prefrontal cortex in the middle, medial inferior prefrontal cortex, guess what? That's the happy part of the brain. And so I know I sent a note out to my team and one of my doctors went, no, they don't make you happy. They're planning your death. Yeah, no, that's true too. So all of the above is true. So what did I tell you? I said,

so here's the thing. My cat is, the reason he's still here and healthy is because, I mean, I swear he plans on where to cough up a hairball where it will be the most damaging and irritating. He plans it. He also plans on how to kill me. When he's hungry, he darts right in front of my feet, jumps on my legs. He's crazy. I get so irritated with him. But then in the morning when I wake up, he's so cute. He's got this little voice and he calls to me and he's so sweet. I'm like, it just erases all of it. Do you notice how he takes his paws? Yes. He wraps them around you and he nuzzles you. Yeah. Then it just erases all do you notice how he takes his paws yes he wraps him around you and he like nuzzles you yeah and then it just erases all of the annoying things he does makes you happy it's like kids so pets are really important they really are um anyone else write in tell us if your cat

tries to kill you because i don't know if this is my cat or if it's your cat too um okay what Okay. What have we got? So exercise, oh boy, is this true? Exercise fights off stress by increasing levels of the brain protein galanin, according to research in mice recently published in the journal of neuroscience. This is so true. I mean, exercise, I never understood why it is the number one thing that boosts my mood. So I know it actually helps with dopamine and serotonin. Apparently it helps with galenine. It helps with BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, so which helps with anti-aging.

So talk about this. Well, exercise helps so many things. Boosts blood flow, boosts dopamine, boosts serotonin. Head-to-head against antidepressants has been shown to be equally effective. The most important exercise you can do, however, is coordination exercises where you're activating your cerebellum, that back bottom part of the brain, that when you activate that, it actually turns on the rest of your brain. So exercise is really important. One more study quickly. Specific fungi in the gut are associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and found in people with mild cognitive impairment. And it can be altered, lessened by eating a modified Mediterranean diet. This is

research out of Wake Forest School of Medicine. Your diet really matters. So are they talking more keto oriented, like low sugar is what I'm guessing? No, it's healthy. Lots of plants and vegetables, lots of plants and vegetables. So you have the good, because all fungi, I think mushrooms are not bad. Candida, bad, can overgrow. But sugar feeds it. And sugar feeds it. But eating colorful fruits and vegetables can really help. Now BrainMD has a brand new product called NeuroGreens. It's actually great in my smoothie.

Tastes so good. But it's loaded with antioxidants. And we're actually going to change the name over time to Happy Greens. And we have a new mushroom product. Yeah, don't name it Happy Shrooms. I wanted to name it Happy Shrooms, but I couldn't. So we're going to come up with smart mushrooms or something. No, smart mushrooms is what they are because they've been found to not only help your mood, to not only help your immune system, but also to help with cognitive function. So whenever you read the paper, you know, we just love for you to go, okay, what are brain articles in the news and send them to us. And whenever you leave us a comment, question or review, we all we will enter you into a drawing, as we talked about earlier, to win either the Brain Warriors Way cookbook, tennisana's book, or The End of Mental Illness. So whatever you learned today,

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