Change Your Brain Every Day - Can Having Social Connections Improve Physical Health?

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

It’s a known fact that people who are lonely and socially isolated tend to have more problems with their mental health, but is it possible that connecting yourself to others socially can actually improve your physical health, as well. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss a recent study that provides a surprising answer.

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. Welcome back. We have something so interesting to talk about today. There's a really cool study we're going to start with. We have something so interesting to talk about today. There's a really cool study we're going to start with. And I've been wanting to discuss chronic pain because we've

been getting so many questions. But first, let's talk about this. There is this town that has found a social cure for illness, right? This is crazy, but it's really cool. So this is in England. This was written in The Guardian. Let's read this. When isolated people who have health problems are supported by community groups and volunteers, the number of emergency admissions to hospitals falls spectacularly.

While across the whole of Somerset emergency hospital admissions rose by 29% during the three years of a study. In Fromme, they fell by 17%. So in one hospital, they fell, or was that a town? That's a town. They fell by 17%. A famous paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2010 reviewed 148 studies involving 300,000 people and discovered that those with strong social relationships had 50% lower chance of death across average study period, which was 7.5 years, than those with weak connections. So the magnitude of the effect of this paper reports is comparable with quitting smoking. So being connected is critically important.

This is huge. And so this town actually had a very forward-thinking mayor. And they went, okay, we can't accept the increased costs and the increased burden on individuals and society who are sick. So what can we do? So what they did is they began to surround people who were sick with services. Which is interesting. So they would help them, you know, whether it's the money they needed help with, but they would also help them be more connected to other people in the community. So it in many ways is really a social cure. So we certainly have experienced this even in our own family. Well one of the things that I thought was really interesting, I wrote this,

pro-inflammatory diets make us lonely and sick. So another sort of part of the study, it showed that when you have high inflammation in your body, and we've talked about that from the standard American diet, from having low omega-3 fatty acids, from having a leaky gut, that when you have inflammation in your body, which you can test with a blood test called C-reactive protein or the omega-3 index.

So inflammation, one, increases threat-related brain sensitivity to negative social experiences. So you're more sensitive to rejection. You are more sensitive to negative social feedback. So you get your feelings hurt more often, which means you're then going to withdraw more from other people. And so this crazy diet we're feeding people is actually increasing. And if you mix that with gadgets, you are increasing sadness. Well, and there's another part to that. It's not part of this study, but it's part of what we do and part of other studies that

we have discussed is that when people eat pro-inflammatory diets, they experience more chronic pain, their joints, their back, migraines, things like this. And so they will tend to isolate anyways. So you isolate for many reasons when you have inflammation. So they're more sensitive to rejection. They hurt more. And there's another fascinating study about when you're socially rejected, the pain centers in your brain actually go up. So you hurt physically. And so we're going to do another podcast soon on chronic pain. But partly, the people who suffer the most are also the people

who are most socially isolated. So I want to just discuss that we have talked a lot about now this family that we've been helping and we it was when we first started helping this this this family and it's someone in our own family, it was not easy to sort of unravel the whole thing. And it's one of those situations where, you know, it's like you've got, all of a sudden, let's just say that like you're cooking and a grease fire breaks out.

And all of a sudden you've got a fire on the stove, the fire catches the drapes, then it jumps over somewhere else. And all of a sudden you're looking and you're like, oh my god, like where do I start? Okay, because there's all these emergencies you have to deal with, right? That's what it felt like for me, jumping in to try to help this. It was like, where do I start? Where do I start unraveling first, right? It was overwhelming. So when you're first starting something like that, it feels really overwhelming to try to figure out where to begin. And when there are children, especially when there's children involved.

But we did that. And we did similar to what this study talked about. We just started trying to figure out resources and wrapping services around the family. Right. And that's really what we did. And fortunately for us, and I would still recommend that you try to work with this, we know how to speak to certain people in certain positions. Like social services. Like social services.

So like social workers or, you know, CPS or DHS, whatever you want to say. We knew how to sort of communicate with them. CPS for people that don't know is Child Protective Services, right? So we know how to communicate with them. Right. We know how to communicate with them. So my suggestion would be learn how to communicate with them, speak their language. Remember, it's their game, right? It's their game, their toys, whatever. So learn how to communicate with them or find someone who does so that you are speaking the same language rather than fighting with them. You want to be speaking their language.

Rather than see them as the enemy. You do not want to see them as the enemy. You want to learn how to work with them. You have to learn how to work with them. And it's hard because it's an emergency. And I often say you need to know the rules of the game that you're in. Right. Right. So when I go to court, if I'm testifying in court for someone I scan, for example, I know

they're going to attack me. It's just part of the rules of the game. It's part of the rules of the game. So one side loves me and thinks I should win a Nobel Prize, which of course I should. The other side thinks I should be arrested and demonized and so on. But if you know the rules of the situation you're in, you don't take it personally. Exactly. So when I was in this situation and everything just felt overwhelming

and I'm trying to figure out where to start, you just step back for a minute. You make a list of all of the potential resources. And then you make what I did is sort of like make a list of like, okay, I can handle this this way. I can handle this this way. the potential resources and then you make what I did is sort of like make a list of like okay I can handle this this way I can handle this this way I sort of like stepped back and looked at the whole thing and decided how I was going to handle it and just like you said I went I need to know the rules of the game these are not my rules and it doesn't matter whether I think it's right or wrong I just need to know how to play and so I need to know how to communicate with these people.

Well, and you're really good at this because you were an ICU nurse. Right. Assess, assess, assess, assess. Airway, breathing, circulation. So you've got all these emergencies, figure it out. In a difficult situation, you have to take care of the immediate needs first, right? Is there safety? Is there safety? Is there food?

Can we get the basic needs covered? And then it's connecting them to groups. So we stayed connected. And that's what we did. That was really helpful. Her mom really came in, and that's what we did really yes helpful her mom really came in and that was a surprise right but I think is one of the most important parts of it so we got the only rally although we needed her mother to take our brain health

assessment free online you can go to brain health assessment com will tell you what brain type you have and then recommend you know what are what are the interventions, what are the supplements for that type. So she was a three, which is worried, rigid, inflexible. Things don't go her way. She gets really upset. And there were lots of explosions. And we're like, oh, no, we have to fix that. So you have to understand the biology of it.

Which was obviously part of the whole history and dynamics. So, but the point being, we were able to step back and go, okay, how do we wrap these services around for these people? And then when Child Protective Services realized, oh, these people actually want to work with us, guess what? They started being willing to help us with those resources. They were much more helpful.

They were much more helpful. Initially, there was not much help, but that's because they're used to dealing with people fighting with them all day, every day. When all of a sudden, they realize, okay, they're going to work with us. Suddenly, they've got someone that they can work with. They're going to help you more. So if we just think about the social cure, it was you connecting and me connecting with your sister. Yeah, we were a little, but you and I were a little bit like good cop, bad cop, for sure. Well, that's how we always are. There was a little bit of check and balance there, for sure.

But we were connected, right? And we were not going to become disconnected. We were connected. We were connected with the kids that Tamara got involved in groups and that was a connection. She got involved with work. She did everything we told her to do. That was really a connection. But I want us to think about what is really the social cure. The social cure is if you're lonely, if you're depressed, if you have really bad thoughts, it's really important to be connected with other people. Now, the quality of the people really does matter, obviously. And she didn't want to go.

And I know when you're socially isolated, it's really hard to take that first step. Really hard. I would have to be on the phone sometime with her for an hour, hour and a half, just getting her to get up and go out. Cause she wasn't, she wasn't close at the time. Now we've got her close, but I would be there. And then finally there were some days where I'm like, get up, get your clothes on and get your blankety blank blank out of the house. Like it's not an option. What is blankety blank? Yeah, I can't say that. But it's like, there were days where it's like the bad cop comes out because it's like, it's, you have to like make it happen. Once she would go every time it was the same thing. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I went. And I wanted to like strangle her. Cause if you knew what it took for

me to get her to go, it was a big deal. We get it. It's hard. It's hard. You need some accountability, someone pushing you a little bit to get you to go. Because it's so important that you have that support, accountability, you know, those social services wrapped around you. Right. So if you are feeling sick, it's so important to get the help you need, but be connected to your church, to your community, volunteering. All of those things are absolutely essential to getting and staying well. When we did the Daniel Plan, this big program at Saddleback Church

that's now done in thousands of churches around the world. What we learned is people got better together or they get sick together. And it's based on these five pillars, faith, why do you care, food, fitness, focus, brain health, and friends. People get better together, they get sick together. People in our program who actually did it with someone else lost twice the amount of weight than other people. We want to be part of your community. That's why we do this podcast. And it's why both Tan and I are on Facebook. And we certainly have a huge community at Amen Clinics. But we want to provide you with the information you need. And our hope is part of the Brain Warriors way is you

live the Brain Warriors way and then you teach somebody else to live it. Because when you give it away, it's actually you're creating your own support group, making it more likely you'll stay on the program forever. Stay with us. 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.