Change Your Brain Every Day - Can Hypnosis Help You Quit Smoking or Lose Weight? - Pt. 2 with Dr. Mike Dow

Episode Date: August 28, 2018

The connection between your mind and your body is extremely powerful. If you can learn to harness this connection, you can make drastic improvements in your life. In the second part of Hypnosis Week, Dr. Daniel Amen is joined by author Dr. Mike Dow to discuss the surprising way you can use your mind to help heal your body.

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. Welcome back. We're in hypnosis week and I'm here with Dr. Mike Dow. And let's talk about some of the uses, some of the appropriate uses and maybe some of the inappropriate uses. You know, there are many myths about it. Like you'll lose control.

I mean, I've been doing it for 40 years, over a thousand patients. Nobody loses control. You'll do something against your will. I've never had that happen. Although I'm not giving people, and you probably aren't giving people the suggestions to do bad things. That's right.

Right. Never heard of that. False memories, that it's going to create false memories. Absolutely not. Unless I would lead you into something and you and I are never going to want somebody to believe something that's not there, of course. Well, and memory is tricky because you can make up memories. Of course. And that's one of the reasons they actually took hypnosis out of courtrooms. Yes, that's right.

Because they found the memories were not always accurate. That's right. And I think that's fair to say. But it's also the mind is a meaning machine and it creates things all the time. Which is also why, you know, in police lineups, it's double blind. So the, you know, so the policeman who's there with you doesn't know who their number one suspect is because he's going to look at you and say, so do you think it's witness number two? And, you know, that policeman's, even the tone of his or that policeman or policewoman's voice is going to lead you into saying, maybe it is suspect number two. So yes, you know, there's a reason why that suggestibility is something to notice, but, you

know, the brain isn't going to just, you know, I think people are a little bit afraid of that, that it's going to, oh, I'm going to plant some memory of Santa Claus, you know, breaking into my home and, you know, robbing us when we were seven. Well, that's not going to happen, right? Let's hope not. So where is it helpful? It can help people stop smoking. Absolutely. It can help them with weight as long as it's part of a rational weight program, right? You're not going to be able to eat everything you desire. And just because you've been under a trance, that will magically make it happen. But it certainly can support it. Absolutely. I've seen it really be helpful for pain syndromes.

Oh, yeah. Huge. I also think it's incredibly helpful for sleep. Yeah. All of these things, you know, and I think on a really basic level, when you look at another thing you're going to be doing for me here at Amen Clinics is looking at a QEEG and looking at my brain waves. And at a very basic level, hypnosis is simply slowing the brain waves down from, you know.

Well, we don't know. We're going to find that out. Hopefully. We'll find that out. Because meditation, fool does, meditation actually sped them up. Yeah. meditation fooled us, meditation actually sped them up. That there's this, so we think of delta sleepy waves, theta daydreaming waves, alpha relaxed but focused, beta focused, high beta anxious.

Well, I haven't even heard of gamma waves, which is super fast. Right, right. But when people go in meditative states, their gamma waves which is super fast right right when people go in meditative states their gamma waves elevate uh-huh and i'm like wow that's so interesting yeah that meditation doesn't tune you out it tunes you in yeah and so our hypothesis we'll see um with your brain yes is will slow waves surge would make sense, or is it really fast waves? And people, we published a study on a kundalini yoga form of meditation. It's called Kirtan Kriya. I love that.

It's a chanting satana. And after eight weeks of doing this simple 12-minute meditation, they had stronger resting frontal lobe function, stronger resting executive function, focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control. Isn't that incredible? Isn't that crazy? So I was, when I was an intern, my year of hypnosis,

I decided I would do groups on the units I was on for the nurses because I realized if the nurses loved me, my internship year would be awesome. But if the nurses hated me, then my internship year would be hell. They're very smart. And being married to a nurse, i know that is absolutely true um and so i used to run a group for them where we do weight loss and smoking and pain reduction uh anxiety reduction and it was so effective yeah but at the end of one group this really pretty nurse came up to me and said i'm having problems getting pregnant do you think you could help me and i'm like i don't know that sounds

interesting to me i'll take this on let's find out and what what happened is because she was having trouble getting pregnant every time she had sex with her husband, she would start crying, right? So she's traumatized by her infertility. And so I put her in a trance and I made her a tape and I had her imagine her uterus and her fallopian tubes, which most people don't know, but they're all muscle. They're all smooth muscle. And what happens to muscle when you become unhappy, when you become anxious or you become stressed is they clamp down just like the smooth muscle on the blood vessels on the other patient that we talked about. And so I made her a tape so that after every time she had sex, she listened to the tape

and it would put her in a relaxed hypnotic state. And that's what you want. And two months later, she's pregnant. Makes sense. But the mistake I made was I went home and told my wife, I said, hey, I helped a really pretty nurse at work get pregnant. That didn't go over very well.

Well, I think it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, there was an Ohio State University Department of Psychiatry study that actually measured immune response. And they found they actually used really stressed out medical students as they were facing their exams. And the control group didn't practice self-hypnosis. So they were taught hypnosis, and then they used it at home. And then they measured their immune system response

via blood. And the control group didn't practice self-hypnosis. And they found that, and of course, in medical school, these exams are very, very stressful. So it may mimic something that you're facing at home, a stressful life event, going through a divorce, or losing a job, very stressful. So it may mimic something that you're facing at home, you know, a stressful life event, you know, going through a divorce or losing a job or something. And they found that the people who practice self-hypnosis, those medical students, that the markers of their immune response went up and the people who did not practice self-hypnosis, they went down

significantly. So, you know, I think that there is hard, solid evidence that this integration of mind and body is there. And it's not this airy-fairy, you know, Berkeley granola crunchy thing that we're just going to visualize things and they're going to happen. It actually works, you know, in study after study, you know, in bedwetting children. They put it up against, you know, a prescription antidepressant or hypnosis. They were both equally effective. You know, it's, yes. And, you know, I think the other thing, you know, a VA study looking at smoking, I think the one mistake people make, there's all these hypnosis clinics and, you know, strip malls and, you know, and they think, oh, I'm just going to go to one hypnosis session, and then I'll be done.

And I'm going to lose weight or quit smoking. And I think those are the two people think of it for, I think those are probably the two, right? Smoking and weight loss. And they think, I'm just going to get hypnotized once, and then I'll be cured. Well, it doesn't really work quite like that. And you still have to make other changes

and it works in an integrative way. So I like this VA study because they were still using other strategies. So they were using a replacement therapy. These veterans who were trying to quit smoking were still given the patch. So it wasn't, oh, let's just go to that mini mall and get one session of hypnosis and then you're cured. It wasn't like that's just go to that mini mall and get one session of hypnosis and then you're cured it wasn't like that at all it was several sessions it was using other strategies with hypnosis as a sort of 360 whole person centered treatment and they were of course the veterans who got hypnosis were much more likely to quit smoking. So the other group got the traditional things and the hypnosis group got the traditional things plus hypnosis and they had a significant increase.

That's right. And that's my experience. That's right. So another one of my favorite stories. So when I was an intern, now I'm on neurology and neurologists don't like psychiatrists. Isn't that interesting? Neurolog't like psychiatrists. Isn't that interesting? Neurologists and psychiatrists got divorced a hundred years ago. And it's funny, you know, the founder of psychiatry really is Sigmund Freud, who was a neurologist. But

I had a very famous patient, because Walter Reed's this really well-known place, and he was a World War II hero who'd written a best-selling book. He was able to rescue many Jews out of Germany during the Nazi era, and he now had Parkinson's, and he's as sweet as can be. And what was different about me when I was an intern is I like to sit and talk to my patients yeah um because you know i mean i'm a psychiatrist by nature i like the relationship and so he and i had this very good relationship and i'm on call one night and he's like will you give me a sleeping pill and i'm like well of course but can i hypnotize you instead? Now, he has Parkinson's. And he had bad Parkinson's.

And his tremor was really terrible. And that can really interfere with sleep. Oh, yeah. And I remember putting him in a trance. And before I put him to sleep, his tremor went away. And in my mind, I went, oh, my God. That's so cool. Oh, my God.

That's so cool. But, you know, I went, oh, my God, that's so cool. Oh, my God, that's so cool. But, you know, I mean, I was cool. And my daughter, who's 15, says I don't have game. Yeah. Which is funny because I got a mother, so I totally have game. Who is smart and beautiful, so clearly you have game. I have game. But anyways, I was really cool in that situation.

But internally, the little four-year-old in me is jumping up and down. This is so cool. This is so cool. So in the morning when we were on rounds, I told my attending, his name was Dr. Jabari, about the hypnosis session the night before and how his tremor went away in a trance now parkinsonian tremors go away when they sleep so there's some connection between hypnosis and sleep but he clearly wasn't sleeping yeah and i remember when i told my attending he rolled his eyes at me and i've looked at him i went no watch and in front of eight of my fellow interns and the attending i put him in a trance and now he's fully awake and he has no tremor is that incredible and dr jabari went whoa yeah and that afternoon we filmed it. And he did an EEG.

Oh, cool. You're going to have an EEG. And it became my first professional paper. That's incredible. All right. And so it's this mind-brain-body connection. Most people don't know your body responds to every single thought you have. If you have negative thoughts, your hands get colder, they get wetter, your muscles get tense, your heart rate variability goes down, and your brain starts to not behave right.

Yep. Right? Your body responds to every thought you have. Well, what condition isn't exacerbated by stress? So if hypnosis on a very basic level, you know the father-son psychiatrists who, Spiegel and Spiegel, who were, I think they were Stanford and was he somewhere in New York?

Stanford and the other one was at one of the institutions in New York. They said that hypnosis at a very basic level is just the changing of the guard from the, you know, this fight or flight response to this rest and digest response. So on a very basic level, it makes sense for almost any condition, but, you know, and a lot of the psych, you know, I've, I've so many of these stories too, where I'll treat somebody and I, I love, you know, as somebody who treats PTSD and, you know, that's one of my passions is helping people, you know, especially in this day and age with so many, so much trauma, you know, you know, the history of sexual abuse, physical abuse and people haunted by this and realizing that, yes, we can actually help you with that. You know, so I use a lot of different modalities. I use bilateral stimulation to help them. And I love using hypnosis, you know, because hypnosis really allows us to get in there and it allows us to use the, you know, it's like we're opening up this editing suite on

our Mac, you know, and it's like the delete button is working. And, you know, we have, you know, here we are in this great studio and we have this TV. And it's like we're opening up this studio. And it's like the delete button now works. The fast forward button works. The rewind button works. And I was treating this man with a history of sexual abuse. And after our session, he looked at me and he said that's the weirdest thing and he had this he's like I still

wait a minute what and we we sort of implanted images images that he chose sort of over the the the traumatic memories and he said I still know that i'm a i was abused but now when i'm thinking about it it's like all i'm seeing are those positive images that's like that's like that's like a miracle like and it was just wow i you know that would and that was one of the first maybe 10 cases i used hypnosis um uh with the treat PTSD. And after that session, I was sold. You were hooked. I was hooked.

Yeah, because that's how we get hooked when we help people. Yeah. I mean, we love that. And it can help you. So if you stay with us, what we're going to do is actually go through the steps of how you can benefit from hypnosis at home. Stay with us. Use the code podcast 10 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

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