Change Your Brain Every Day - Do You Have COVID-19 Depression?

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Dr. Daniel Amen has often said that in this pandemic, mental hygiene is as important as washing your hands, and the recent spike in brain health issues certainly supports this. But what if your suffering is going under the radar? In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen go over some of the telltale signs that you may be experiencing COVID depression, even though the symptoms may not at first seem obvious.

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. Hey, everybody. Think of this as mental health optimization week going into week 20 something of the pandemic. It's just beaten up

so many people. I mean, it's sort of why we call the podcast The Brain Warriors Way, because no doubt 2020 has been a war for so many of us. But before we get to the content, we have podcast winners. Jesse Batoni from New Jersey, who gets a signed copy. Change your brain. Who gets a signed copy at the end of mental illness. And we've got Sandra Nassar from Texas, who gets a signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way cookbook. So we are so happy when you guys send us, you go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com,

you leave us a review, you send us questions that we end up reading, and you just tell us what's going on in your lives. So it enters you into a drawing. Thank you. So this week, a lot of the questions we have are around depression and anxiety. And it's been so hard for so many.

And ultimately, when the pandemic started, I wrote down mental hygiene is just as important as washing your hands. In many ways, our brains and our minds have been assaulted. And to manage the anxiety, people often do the exactly wrong thing that skyrockets depression. Yeah, it's been such an interesting time. And sometimes it feels like our depression isn't even necessarily, it doesn't start on our own. So you end up with other family members who are struggling, and you're trying to help all of them, right. And as that starts to happen, it stacks for you. So pretty soon, you got, you know, kids that are having problems and parents are having problems and parents that are having problems and siblings that are having problems.

And you're the one in the middle trying to take care of it all. And that can be really stressful for a lot of people, especially right now. If you're in that sandwich generation, especially, we've just noticed it seems to be really difficult. Well, and there's a term that therapists use called compassion fatigue. And the more you give, often it'll come back to you. But what if it's not coming back to you? Well, and even if it comes back to you in other ways, it's still exhausting. So, I mean, we've certainly both had that feeling

as many of the people who listen to us have had, where it's like, you know, you need to help. You're going to help, but there's just days where you wake up and you're like, I just need to go away. I just need to go away. In fact, you did. In fact, I did. I went away to only 18 hours, but I went away. I just got in the car, drove to San Diego. I was just like, I need to leave. But you weren't mad, right? No, no. It was just a matter of, no, it was just a fight or anything like that. But respite days are just so important. So when we look at anxiety, at depression, brand new article that just came out. Depression has doubled in the United Kingdom, likely here in the United States as well. And in much of the world, because isolation breeds depression and then chronic fear, if

you're watching the news breeds depression right and often what people do is they go to what's easy sugar right alcohol marijuana trying to just feel better fast do you remember um so we made a commit i get very very very stirred up by the news so we made this commitment in our house that it was i wasn't going to watch the news because it's just too, I react too strongly to what's happening. And so I came in your office one day and like, and it worked really well for like a month. It was just great. And then I just, I don't turn the news on. I catch the headlines on my phone. Don't look at them. I just like read the headlines, just make sure there's nothing I need to know. Like there's not a firestorm outside my house, but other than that, don't want to know. And so I walked in your office one day yelling

and you were like, did you turn the news on? And I'm like, I did. By accident, I turned the TV on. I got busy and walked away from it. I didn't switch the station. Five minutes it took. Five minutes. So you have to know your triggers.

Sort of like a modern day Game of Thrones. Oh, it just, it's like reality. But it doesn't end well. No, it's like reality television. It's so frustrating. So how do you know if you're depressed? I think that would be a good topic for us. Yeah.

Because sometimes it masks itself, doesn't it? It feels like, like I've talked to people who clearly seem depressed and they have all the manifestations of depression. But when you ask if they're depressed, they're like, no, I'm just tired. No, I'm just, you know, no, I just feel a little blah. Or, you know, like I think it masquerades maybe as fatigue or different. There are symptoms that maybe people are not recognizing as maybe it's the start of depression. Right. So answer these questions.

In the last two weeks, have you found that you had little interest or pleasure in doing things you usually like? Have you felt down, depressed, hopeless, helpless, worthless? Have you had trouble sleeping either, getting to sleep or staying asleep? Do you feel tired, have little to no energy? Has your appetite gone away or has it skyrocketed? Feeling bad about yourself, feeling that you're a failure, like you've let yourself or your family down. That's a big one. I know I've got a couple of family members that feel that way right now because just the COVID thing really, it feels like even though you're doing the best you can, there's not much any of us can do, you feel like you're letting people down, trouble concentrating, even on simple things like reading news headlines or watching TV, moving or speaking slower than normal, or being more

fidgety, speaking faster and being more restless than normal. So or thoughts that you'd be better off dead or hurting yourself in some way. And that's a big one. As soon as you have the thought, what's the point? Why am I here? You need to start worrying. Yeah. Pay attention. And so knowing if you're depressed does not mean jumping to medication. So we're going to give you other alternatives.

But what makes people vulnerable to depression? If you have a family history of depression, if you're isolated, so what are we now? Isolated. If you're surrounded by negativity and yeah and you want to be careful too like if you are like when you're talking about negativity if you're a person who tends to be that person to fix things like you know i think of myself as being pretty pretty tough and i tend to be that person in the family who's going to fix things for family members you know i've got i've got a

mother who she's very self-sufficient but but I worry about her because she's older and she's living alone and it's COVID. And so I'm always like trying to check on her. And I've got, you know, my two nieces in the house with us and my daughter. And then I've got a couple of family members who are really struggling at the moment more than they normally do because of COVID. And so there's a lot of us that are like, I'm the one, I'm the one they have to count on. And you want to jump in and help everybody. Well, the problem with that is it's great. But when you're that person that everybody relies on it, that stress manifests itself. So you can start to even see things like hair loss, you that your sleep patterns, we already talked about sleep

patterns, change, skin, you're breaking out things like that. So you may not be seeing it in traditional ways. But there's also ways to fix it. So one thing I noticed is I was so busy, I was getting, you know, I was like getting away from my normal strategies. So we should talk about fixing, but not in this episode. We'll talk about it more in the next episode. I want us to go, so how do people get this way? Chronic stress, which I think everybody's experienced, actually shrinks cells in the hippocampus, the major mood and memory center of the brain. And I've noticed through this time, I mean, sometimes I'm like,

where's that word? And that usually doesn't happen to me. 10 years ago, it happened actually a lot more until I was taking brain and memory power boost and fish oil and my supplements, and then it stopped happening to me. But chronic stress can certainly leave you vulnerable to depression, as can having a head injury in the past and having low thyroid. So getting your hormones checked is really critical. And, you know, we often say you can't change what you don't measure. And so getting your important numbers check is just critically important. When we come back, we're going to talk about what do you do about it? If you're really struggling with your mood or with your mind, what are some simple strategies you can do?

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