Change Your Brain Every Day - Could You Have a Brain Injury and Not Know It? with Dr. Kabran Chapek

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

With a growing database of over 150,000 brain scans, one of the biggest lessons Dr. Daniel Amen has learned in his work is that mild traumatic brain injuries can destroy lives, and people don’t even recognize it. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Amen and his wife Tana are joined by “Concussion Rescue” author Kabran Chapek of a discussion on how these brain injuries can occur, and why people tend to overlook them.

We are going to start your new year, your new decade off with a bang. Tan and I are going to do a six-week live class. So starting January 21st, every Tuesday, we're going to be with you for an hour. And at the end, we're going to give away over $20,000 in prizes. We look forward to helping you kick off this new year by becoming brain health revolutionaries. 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

Warrior's 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 amonclinics.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 everyone to a very special week of the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We have my friend and also colleague at Amen Clinics, Dr. Kabran Chapik, who is one of our staff physicians at Amen Clinics Northwest in Bellevue, Washington. He has worked with us, my goodness, for the last six years. He's a graduate of Bastyr

University. He's an expert in the use of functional and integrative treatments, collaborates extensively with the 40 physicians we have at Amen Clinics. He has a special interest in the assessment and treatment of Alzheimer's and dementia, traumatic brain injuries, which we're going to talk about, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders. He's the founding president of the Psychiatric Association of Naturopathic Physicians. He has a brand new book that I'm so excited about and wrote the introduction to called Concussion Rescue, which is going to be released January 28th. It's going to be available everywhere. Welcome, Cabran. What a joy to have you on the Brain Warriors Way podcast.

My pleasure. I'm excited to talk with you both. So 40% of the patients who come to Amen Clinics have had a significant brain injury at some point in the past. It's a staggering number. I actually think it's one of the epidemics driving the rise of mental health challenges in America. So why Concussion Rescue? Why did you write this book? Daniel, I wrote this book because there's so many people who need help. Like you said, it's a silent epidemic. And there's those who have had concussions and they're not getting better. You know, the assumption is you have a concussion, you get better. But not everyone does.

And that's why they come to see us. Not everyone can come and see us. They need help. And that's one set of people who need the book and they need the help. The second set are those who have some other mental health issue or neurological condition that maybe have memory problems and they're not getting better and they can't figure out why and it actually may be due to a past concussion. We see these, like you said, four out of ten people come in to see us and they have had some issue and they have had um some issue and they then we scan them and they we find out they've actually had brain injury as part of their yeah when i first started actually when you and i first started

dating i scanned you right i mean that was just absolute prerequisite before i completely fell in love with you i mean i was very taken with you. Best line ever. Right away. But I had to see your brain. And we could see in the left side of your brain, it had been hurt. And I asked you, did you ever have a concussion? I am a neurosurgical ICU nurse. And you said no.

That means coma, brain drain. Like, that's a head injury. Right. But so often. And you said no. And what I've learned from looking at all these scans over the last three decades is, well, are you sure? Right. Have you ever fallen out of a tree, fell off a fence, dove into a shallow pool, been in a car accident?

And what did you say? Yes. My sister fell asleep at the wheel going 75 miles an hour, rolled the car two and a half times. Yeah. And I thought because I essentially walked away from it without being hospitalized, never lost consciousness, that I was fine. And you were how old when that happened? 25. So this was after the cancer diagnosis. Yeah. Yeah. After all of that. But what you're saying makes me think of a really good point. And with, with your book, Dr. Cabran, is that so many people don't really understand what brain injuries are. We just did a podcast and we scanned Chris Browning, who's a very successful actor who did heroin once for six years. So it ended up homeless.

And when I first asked him if he ever had a head injury, he said no. And as he begins telling me his story, I'm like, you need to write a book. Like his story is insane. And the number of times that he's been knocked out, literally knocked out one time overnight was unconscious and didn't think of it as a brain injury. And I just, how is it possible that we are so uneducated still, which I'm assuming is what you're trying to help with, with your book. But I think we don't know. So let's go over. So how do people get head injuries?

What are some of the most common causes of brain injuries, head injury? I mean, it's the same thing, concussion. Concussion just means you hit your head really hard and it had an effect. Exactly right. Exactly. A concussion is a form of traumatic brain injury. It's more mild, but it's still a traumatic brain injury. And it can happen from a hit or a jolt to the head, even whiplash. It's horrible, but we think shaken baby syndrome. I mean, that's jostling the fragile brain. We know, I learned from you, the brain is so soft. It's as soft as butter. The skull is hard as a rock. And it can be damaged also from our veterans who have blast injuries. That concussive force

will completely penetrate the skull and the brain and damage the soft, soft brain. So I want you, if you're listening at home or in your car, wherever you are, I want you, as we go through different age groups and the kinds of head injuries that are common, I just want you to ask yourself, have you ever had a brain injury? And so you mentioned shaken baby syndrome. And I have a granddaughter who I'm completely in love with, who's so busy, just like her mother.

And there's so many different ways Haven can get oh i had no i almost watched her do it like five times in an hour it's crazy you have to have your eyes on down a flight of stairs to tripping over something to irritating the dog and the dog gives her knocks her down to being so wiggly on the changing table falling falling off. To being irritating. And I'm not saying she's irritating because she's not. She's great. Well, to us, she's not. But to an impulsive parent, when you have a hyperactive child,

you may shake them or hit them just because of your high level of frustration. And this is just for hyperactive infants. And so fall, skateboarding, riding your bicycle. And people think helmets protect the brain. They don't. They protect the skull. They protect the skull from being fractured but inside your skull your skull actually has sharp bony ridges god and i've had this discussion about why didn't you put bumper guards on those sharp ridges and he told me i didn't know they'd let kids hit soccer balls with their head that's stupid um that's right you don't have to lose consciousness to have a concussion. That's another myth, people think.

Or if they haven't gone to the ER, oh, I wouldn't have had a concussion, but a fall off a horse, diving into a shallow pool. We try and ask patients, right, 10 times because we minimize it. Or if you didn't lose consciousness, it wasn't a concussion. Or there's amnesia around, it wasn't concussion. Or there's amnesia around head injuries. They often forget. And also there's sometimes distance. So I had a pastor who came in. He had a car accident, thought he was fine, got checked out at the ER, no brain bleed. And then two weeks later, he couldn't write a sermon he was completely confused and we know

that some you know when there's an injury there's that immediate damage to the vessels and some swelling but then there's secondary injury where there's a chronic inflammatory state it's like a fire that hasn't been put out it continued to smolder for months and sometimes years. And that's what I'd like to help people figure out, that this inflammation can be quenched and the brain can heal, even if it's been... All right. So have you had a brain injury? Or if someone is suffering in your family, then you're worried, and that's why you're listening to the brain warriors way podcast it's it's just so important to know if it's true because we can rehabilitate it i mean i think that's the most exciting thing that you've seen and that i've seen which is why

we did the big nfl, high levels of damage, like stop lying about it, but rehabilitate them. And that's what we are going to start talking about in the next podcast. So stay with us. We're with Dr. Kabran Chapik, the author of the new book, Concussion Rescue. If you really want to know the method of how we treat traumatic brain injury and concussions at Amen Clinics, this is a great resource. It's a great book for you to pick up. Cabran also is going to have a new course at Amen University called Concussion Rescue that we're really excited about. So if you want to get into the deep end of the pool, stay with us.

We'll send out a notice of when the course is already recorded, but when it will be released. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe. So you'll always know when there's a new episode. Stay with us. 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.