Change Your Brain Every Day - Can You Really Keep Your Brain from Aging?

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

People often underestimate the importance of exercising your brain to keep cognitive decline at bay. So what can you do to keep your brain healthy and functioning at its best? In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen continue their live class by explaining the concept of brain retirement and aging, and how to work out your brain properly.

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. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you

and we hope that you will join us in the challenge. So if I was an evil ruler, I would, and I wanted to increase your risk of blood flow problems. I'd create a culture where people start the mornings with caffeine and end the days with alcohol because both lower blood flow to the brain. If I was a good ruler, I would limit video games, screen time, so that people would spend more time outdoors exercising. What about brain enhancing games? Brain enhancing games can be really great, but they can be addictive as well.

They can. Where you just- Like Scrabble. You look more forward to playing your games on your phone than actually talking to your husband. No, I just like beating you at it. Yes, I know you do. It really makes you happy when I lose.

It just does. Light therapy can also help. Light therapy has been shown to increase blood flow to the brain, improve your mood, your focus, your energy, and your sleep. And BrainMD, I'm very excited. I think the link is going to go up tomorrow on the website of our new Bright Minds Light Therapy box. And why? Because it just completely fits first do no harm. And bright light therapy, so a half an hour in the morning,

don't look at the light, have it come at you from the side. So like if you're getting ready in the morning, you can just set it next to you? Right. Oh, that's very cool. For just like 20 to 30 minutes, it's been shown to increase energy, increase focus, increase your mood, reset your circadian rhythm, your sleep rhythm, and actually helps you sleep at night. Why is she looking at it? She's got her eyes closed.

She actually should have it off to the side. I see. Thank you for criticizing my slide. You're right, actually. The R is retirement and aging. I hate this one. But when you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And notice, like the question about the 49-year-old that thought they were old. I have people complaining about their memory in their 20s or their 30s. And they go, oh, well, I'm 30. That means I'm old, which to me is sort of hysterical.

Or I'm 40 and my memory is no good. Well, that's normal. No, that's not normal. It's because you have bad habits. So here's the hippocampus, the little seahorse-shaped structure in the brain. And at the end of Memory Rescue, I wrote a story about Scarlett and Sam, the seahorse twins. So you'll see them throughout part of the presentation. And here they are making new baby seahorses, 700 of them every day. And on this slide, I see a healthy spec scan on the left,

an average 55-year-old scan. But it doesn't have to be like this. My 92-year-old grandmother, when I scanned her, had a really good looking brain. That's your mom's mom? My mom's mom. That makes sense. And that fits my mom's brain, who is also good. But I never want you to forget this. When you stop learning, your brain starts

dying. So always being engaged in learning new things is incredibly important for you to keep your brain young. So here's Samantha, 68 years old. She came to see us. She had really sleepy frontal lobes. That's a bad thing. Focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control. And she started playing ping pong as a way to keep her brain young. But the problem was her husband beat her every game. And he even started to play left-handed. Maybe I should do that. He started playing left-handed, but she was still losing. And then she went on Brain and Body Power Max.

It's our multiple vitamin fish oil brain boost. And she said after about a week, she started beating him every game. And it happened overnight, which he didn't like. And so we did a follow-up scan and her brain was healthier. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. And when you make it better, you have a better life. And so your ping pong game is better. And if you're like Tana and you're a little bit competitive, then you win more. It makes you happier.

Makes me happy. Makes you happier. So how do you know if your brain is prematurely aging? Well, you can get a scan. I mean, I showed you Alize's scan. At 13, her brain looked like she was 75, which is horrifying. If you're older than 50, you just need to get over it and get serious. I remember when I was doing one of my early shows,

I was practicing. I go over my mom's house to practice because my mom is loving and sweet and brutally honest. That's why I love her. It's like she and I get along. She's so honest. Oh, I'm bored. Oh, I don't like that story.

And so she invites her friends to come over and hear me rehearse. You say the same thing about me, though. Yes. Maybe that's why I like you. Because I really like her, too. And one of her friends was like 65. And as she heard me rehearse the script, she goes, oh, now that I'm older, I did that. I dieted.

I exercised. I don't want to do that anymore. And it sort of took me back a little bit. And then I looked at her and I said, as long as you're okay with the consequences of not taking care of your brain, which generally is a lousy memory and depression, then I guess you shouldn't be concerned about it. But if you want quality of life, it's not lifespan. You taught me this word. Healthspan. It's healthspan.

If you want healthspan, the older you get, the more serious you need to be because the gravity of age is coming for you. So just like as we age, our skin falls off our face, that same process is happening in the brain. But it doesn't have to. If you're not engaged in lifelong learning, so learning a language, traveling, learning a new science, learning a new hobby, learning to play ping pong, then it puts you at risk. If you're lonely, I hate that. And we've had tragedies this week right i mean on sunday we were just horrified when we found out about kobe bryant and his daughter three families three teenagers the other families and the pilot you know all lost their lives and And, you know, as people get older, they have more losses. And if you're not

actively engaged with volunteering, making a difference, it's bad for your brain. We are a bonded species. And, you know, if you're a polar bear, you could do just fine alone, but, you know, by and large, we're not polar bears. If you're iron levels are- By and large? Well, you could be a polar bear. I could.

Especially if you're dormant. High iron levels. People go, should I eat red meat? And I'm like, well, well it depends how's your iron if your iron's low like yours tends to be low then red meat is fine um as long as it's hormone free and antibiotic free and grass clean clean clean if your iron's like mine mine tends to run high, less red meat, the better for me because red meat is high in iron, which is why I donate blood on a regular basis to keep my iron at a healthy level. And if you have old telomeres, so telomeres are the end caps on genes that actually hold the genetic material together. Think of them like

shoelaces, the plastic caps on shoelaces. And you can actually measure your telomeres. When I measured mine, I was 63, but my genetic age said was 43. So I was actually younger than you. I didn't measure mine. So you can't say that. No, no. I was actually younger than your real age. Right. But maybe I was 25. Well, you like dating younger people. No, I don't, actually.

Anyways, so how do you keep your brain from aging? New learning. Volunteering. From aging, new learning, volunteering. There's this fascinating study from Baltimore where they measured the hippocampus over two years. In one group, they volunteered. In another group, they just kept doing what they usually did. And after two years, they did another MRI looking at the structure of the hippocampus. So how big is your seahorse? And for the control group, as expected, it shrunk.

For the volunteering group, it grew. Interesting. So being actively engaged in purposeful activity is good for your brain. Social connections, you know, actively fight loneliness. Now, one of the reasons, it's going to sound harsh. Oh, here, Marilyn goes, by and large, that's a good one. See? They're banded.

I wasn't the only one. So let me digress just for a minute. Loneliness sometimes can be because you had a brain injury when you were young and you don't have good empathy or you have impulse control problems. And people don't want to be around you because your brain was hurt. So get your brain right. You have more empathy. Did I say that right? Get your brain right. You have more empathy. Did I say that right? Get your brain right.

Your relationships will be better. So social connections, multiple vitamins, especially vitamins B and C, antioxidants, which help decrease the acceleration of aging, especially colorful foods. And then like me, if your iron's high, you want to donate blood. The I is inflammation. You want to talk about this one? Sure. Chronic inflammation damages all organs.

It's like a low-level fire burning in your body at all times. So some inflammation is necessary. You hurt yourself. You cut yourself. you get injured. You need inflammation to bring all of the cells that help heal the body, right? To the site and help to, to, to, um, just heal that injury. But chronic inflammation is different. It's, it happens because of lifestyle. It happens from being sedentary. It happens from outside toxins. It happens from the food we eat, from stress. And when that happens, that's like this low-level fire that never goes out. And it's damaging all of your organs and causing all sorts of problems like

cancer, arthritis, autism, depression, dementia. Yeah, it's a major cause. And aging, just aging in general. Depression. That's what causes aging. Yeah, depression is not a Prozac or a Zoloft or a Lexapro deficiency. It's a sign your brain and likely your body is inflamed or in trouble. Sure. So how do people know if there's inflammation? Well, one of the big things is when you get your blood tested, we look at something called C-reactive protein.

So if your C-reactive protein is high, your CRP is high, that's one sign of high inflammation, right? So low omega-3 compared to high, so like your omega-3, omega-6 ratio. So if your omega-3s are low and your omega-6s are high, that's another sign. So omega-3s are often called spring fats because they help you live longer, where omega-6s are, I think, corn, soy, processed food. Safflower oil. Increase inflammation. And you can actually get your omega-3 index measured. I think LabCorp Quest does that. There are a number of other companies that do that, like OmegaQuant. I try to do it on all my patients because when they see that their index is way too high, it takes steps to quiet it down.

Yeah. It's funny how fast you can start to see it turn around. It's fun just like, I like numbers. I like to see things change. And our omega-3 power, two of those a day, I've seen in virtually all of my patients who take that helps to normalize their omega-3 index. I know you keep trying to convince me I don't need to take six. I don't know why I'm convinced I need to take six, but it's just me. So rosacea is another one. So- Tell people what that is. I was just about to. Rosacea is when you. Um, so tell people what that is. So I was just about to rosacea is when you see people and they have like the mask, the red mask around their face,

and it looks really swollen. It's that, it's that look that looks like their face is really puffy and red through their cheeks and their nose. Um, that's a sign of inflammation. So rosacea, um, yeah, I mean, I don't know what else to say about it. It's a sign of inflammation, pain. You often see it in alcoholics. Yeah know what else to say about it. It's a sign of inflammation. Pain. You often see it in alcoholics. Yeah. Well, it looks like that. It's not necessarily exactly the same, but that's what it looks like.

That red nose. But they could be inflamed. But that is from drinking, but it's not the same as people. Because people don't often get it and they're not drinkers at all. So it's different. But then it's inflammation. So pain, chronic pain. So people who have joint pain or fibromyalgia,

one of the first things we hear when they clean up their diet is, my pain went away. I got off my medication for fibromyalgia. Because inflammation is one of the major causes of chronic pain. Processed food. Well, why? Because processed food increases omega-6 fatty acids. It increases inflammation.

And that's why people, when they eat a lot of processed food, will tend to increase all of those things. So gum disease, because that definitely increases inflammation it's one of the major causes of heart disease right dementia and we've known that for a while to take care of yeah one of the things i love and um so this is something i learned i don't know i learned it at one of my a4m classes years ago and i I asked my dentist and she said, absolutely spot on do this. I get a water pick. They call it water flossing now, a water pick. And I put just a few drops of bleach, straight, plain bleach. Don't get all the fancy, whatever. It can't have anything else in it, plain bleach. And you floss with that. And so it's actually supposed to be really good for you. I know it sounds crazy, but it's actually

good for you. Um, so leaky gut, we, that's why the diet we suggest is to help you heal your leaky gut. Because leaky gut, anytime your gut's not healthy, your brain is not going to be healthy, and it increases inflammation. Pop quiz. Where are three quarters of your neurotransmitters made? Our group knows this. I know they know this. Do you know it? Of course I know it.

Your gut is called your second brain because it's loaded with nervous tissue, which is why you get butterflies when you're excited, loose stools when you're upset, and probiotics can help the brain. So how to decrease inflammation, omega-3s, healthy nutrition, curcumens, and like you said, floss. And light exercise will help too. We published this study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, higher omega-3s, healthier hippocampus. So if I was an evil ruler, I would put fast food restaurants everywhere.

Especially at school. Everywhere. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.