Change Your Brain Every Day - Can Diet Help Treat Chronic Illness?

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

There are people who suffer from chronic illnesses who take a handful of medicine every day. It's like a common scenario that we've learned to accept as the norm. However, as people become more aware of using food as a medicine and not just as a way to nourish their body, diet as treatment has gained popularity. The question now is, can diet help treat chronic illnesses? Listen to this episode and know the answer. 

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

Hi, doctor. My name is Donna and I have a prior history of breast cancer. I went through chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. And a few years ago, I developed an inflammatory disease, a rare one called pyoderma gangrenosum, and went into respiratory failure from that. And in the last couple of years, I just haven't been feeling good. I did the Daniel Plan diet through Saddleback Church and stuff, so I've been doing that. But they're still treating me with fibromyalgia and thyroid problems and now type 2 diabetes. And all these pills are just kind of making me out there with all this stuff. And I don't exercise very much because I don't feel

good enough to do that, but I'm trying to do the diet. And nobody seems familiar with the causes from pyoderma gangrenosum and maybe that. They put me on 2,000 units of vitamin D and then I had my cardiac enzyme skyrocketed. So they took me off of calcium and vitamin D completely. And so I'm kind of like, I don't know what to be doing. Okay. So with a chronic illness, it's important for you to do all the things you can do to try to help it get better. So you have to make sure you don't have any food out, that you actually do an elimination diet. I don't know if anybody's told you to do that, but it'd be one of the first things that I would do. My friend, Doris Rapp, wrote a number of wonderful books, but one of

them she said, is this your child? And it's about environmental and food allergies that cause chronic illnesses. So I would completely eliminate, just like Tana soy, alcohol, coffee, wheat. No, I'm dead serious. And for the first two months, I would be eating vegetables, some fruit, nuts and seeds and lean protein, and that's it. And if you have one of those that you're allergic to, it's causing the inflammation in your body, it's totally worth doing it. I mean, you'd do anything to be out of this chronic pain and dysfunction, right? Well, we've seen many people just completely transform their bodies just by getting on the right food. So using food as medicine. And even though you don't feel like doing exercise, do whatever you could do.

Maybe it's even in the water, that you're doing things in the water because that will help buffer some of the pain and that you take high dose fish oil. I mean, what we did with our NFL players is we put them on six grams a day and many of them said they decreased their pain meds. And another thing I didn't talk about, but I sort of alluded to it in the show, is environmental toxins can totally ruin your body and ruin your brain. Do you have a flood in the house? Is there any mold? Is there anything toxic in your neighborhood? Thinking about those things can be very important as well. But for you, it sounds like it's an emergency and that you've already been very sick from this. So that means you have to be even more of a warrior for the health of

your brain and make sure that you don't get discouraged and then have a banana split. Yeah. Yeah. Been there, done that. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. My name is Bev and I'm a concerned grandmother. I have a 21 year old granddaughter who is a senior at a university. She's been playing on the women's soccer team for four years. She's just had her fifth brain concussion. I don't understand why they've let her play up until this point, but at this level where she realizes she's done as far as playing competitive soccer, but how can I help her get started on brain health program? Well, I think, you know,

when the show comes out, share it with her for sure, or get my book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, or some of the other programs I did, Magnificent Mind at any age. I'd give her a brain scan for Christmas because when people see their scan, I mean, the concussions may have not caused any lasting damage or they may cause serious damage that is going to make her more emotional, less effective, and can affect school, relationships, money, her own health down the line and going, you're young. Her brain has not even finished developing. It's sustained all of this damage. And now is the time to see how much of her reserve we can get back. And that would be so exciting. But it's critical for her to get this message now. And once people have had brain trauma, sometimes they don't listen the first time because they're inattentive or they're distracted or their

memory is not good or they're moody and they're emotional. It's critical. I mean, you can do her such good by giving her this message. I will. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, my name is Frances. I'm one of those thousands of Americans that have brain injury from automobile collisions, multiple collisions. And in two years of cognitive rehab, I never heard a diet nutrition discussed once. And we didn't talk about exercise either. So I have a couple of questions. One is, do you have a relationship with the National Brain Injury Association? Is there any way that could be facilitated? And two, I wanted to ask you if the VA is really paying any attention to you because brain injury is the signal injury that's of soldiers coming back

from Afghanistan and Iraq. You know, I've actually spoken for the National Brain Injury Association at one of their meetings. I think they need to make this a much bigger part of what they recommend and what they do. I have been harassing the military and the VA to pay more attention to this. I told you about Captain Khafre, who actually started his own nonprofit, you can go, called Brain Scans for Warriors, to raise money for soldiers because there are 300,000 soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who come back with injuries. And often what happens in the military is they'll call them a personality disorder and then send them out. And if you never look, it's very easy to diagnose someone with a behavior disorder rather than in fact that they have a brain disorder, which I just think is wrong.

But, you know, I harass them regularly. Okay, last question is, what about a training program for those of us who were professionals before we were brain injured and are still capable of giving instruction and teaching? Is the clinic doing anything about training besides those bag lunches on Fridays that I used to attend? You know, we have a master's level college course

that I taught over at Vanguard University. We filmed it, put it on DVD. So if you really want to like get into my work on a professional level, that would be a great place to start and get 25 units of CE credits with it as well. Thank you. Hi, Dr. Amen. My name is Michelle.

I really enjoyed your program. I had a stroke when I was 11 years old caused from an AVM, arteriovenous malformation on the left side of my brain. I underwent two treatments of the gamma knife radiation. And then in 2008, I had a massive cerebral hemorrhage followed by a craniotomy, which successfully removed the AVM. My question is, how do I keep my brain as healthy as possible in spite of the significant brain hemorrhage I've endured? Okay. So you've had two brain hemorrhages? Yes. And your brain is still vulnerable. So you are one of the ones that needs to be careful with high-dose fish oil because you don't want to decrease your bleeding time further. A little bit is probably a good idea, but given that you've

already sustained an injury to the left side of your brain, you want to be doing all of these things. No soccer headers. Probably you shouldn't be skiing even with a helmet. Probably shouldn't date guys who love Harley Davidsons. I mean, seriously, you have to be thinking about, okay, I have to protect my head. Your brain reserve, some of your reserve got stolen, right? No fault of yours, but it your reserve. So protecting the food that you eat, the thoughts that you think, the sleep you have. It's like all of these things, you're protecting yourself. And then if you make, remember, just keep it really simple. I'm going to avoid bad things.

And we listed them, right? Drugs, alcohol, brain injuries, toxic thoughts, toxic environments, hypertension, heart disease, all these things, right? Drugs, alcohol, brain injuries, toxic thoughts, toxic environments, hypertension, heart disease, all these things, right? Like I have to be serious about my health. Because remember, the people who live the longest are serious, right? The don't worry, be happy people die, right? So you want to be moderately concerned, right? So we'll leave it there. And you want to then be exercising, but not crazy exercising, right? You want to be exercising, constantly engaged in new learning, only eating healthy food and hanging out with the healthiest people you can find. Great. Thank you.

You're welcome. 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.