Change Your Brain Every Day - Do You Really Need Nutritional Supplements?

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

Those who argue against the need for nutritional supplements state that supplements aren’t necessary if you’re eating a proper, balanced diet. And they’re not wrong. However, the problem with this thinking, as Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen address in this episode, is that virtually none of us are eating a proper, balanced diet. With the food industries prevalent in today’s culture, this task is practically impossible. Dr. Amen draws on material from his new book Feel Better Fast and Make It Last to give you tips on how to implement supplements in your diet to counteract your deficiencies.

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 nutrition week. Feel better fast and make it last. And, you know, I just, I can't think of one thing that we do for our patients that helps them get better for the long run. It's get your food right. And also your supplements right. And we're going to talk about that. But first, I have another wonderful testimonial about our podcast, Sean Berry. This is amazing information. He's a new subscriber since approximately a month back, gaining ground daily. I look forward to healthier thoughts and a healthier lifestyle. My family and I sat around the dinner table most evenings and had open discussions over our favorite thing in the day.

I'm planning to incorporate it's going to be a great day attitude. We're speaking it aloud in the mirror in the morning to myself later at breakfast to my children. I plan to incorporate journaling as well. Thank you very much for this information. I cannot possibly give back to you what I've received from you both. Also, I love the movie, Pollyanna. Me too. I could watch it over and over again. In fact, I do.

You do. All right. So what about supplements? Too often your doctor will say they're nothing more than expensive urine. And I just, I hear this all the time, but I start the chapter on supplements from a quote from our friend Mark Hyman. You don't need supplements if people eat wild, fresh, organic, local, non-genetically modified food grown in virgin, mineral-rich, nutrient-rich soils that has not been transported across vast differences, distances, and stored for months before being eaten and work and live outside, breathe only fresh unpolluted air, drink only pure clean water, sleep nine months, sleep nine hours at night, move their bodies every day, and are free from chronic stressors and exposure to environmental toxins, then it might be possible they may not need supplements.

But because we live in a fast-paced society where we pick up food on the fly, skip meals, eat sugar-laden treats, buy processed foods, and eat foods that have been chemically treated, we should all use a little help from a multiple vitamin mineral supplement. And Mark is a director of functional medicine at the Cleveland clinic. So he's one of the smartest people we know. And the reason I got interested in supplements and created BrainMD, our supplement company, is when I first started looking at scans in 1991, with medications I prescribed, some

of them just looked toxic. And I'm like, oh, that's a bad idea. And I remembered what they taught me in medical school. First, do no harm. Use the least toxic toxic most effective treatments right and i have come to believe all of us should have a multiple vitamin every day why according to the cdc 93 of the population does not have five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Wow.

So we're not getting the nutrients we need, and food has become sort of like Amazon, fast. Predominantly. Yeah, and it's like an insurance policy. I mean, you're covering your bases. And when tested, almost everybody that we know is low in more than one nutrient. Well, let me, I'm just finding from the book, I have this pullout in the book. Are your medications depleting your nutrients? So a lot of you listening.

Yeah, well, that's the other thing. Most people, they think, well, I eat right, I do these things right. But if you're taking medications, they significantly deplete a lot of things. So for example, antacids, besides decreasing stomach acid, which can be bad for you, I mean, what digests your food, stomach acid, it also decreases calcium, phosphorus, folate, and potassium. Antibiotics decrease B vitamins and vitamin K. Hypertensive medicines decreased B6, K, CoQ10, magnesium and zinc. Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen decreases B vitamins,

B vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin K, folate, calcium, zinc and iron. Cholesterol lowering medications like statins, decrease omega-3 fatty acids and CoQ10. Female hormones, decrease folate, magnesium, B vitamins, zinc, and oral contraceptives. They're one of the worst. This is one of the reasons that 23% of women are taking antidepressants.

They decrease B vitamins, decrease magnesium, folate, zinc, tyrosine, the amino acid building block for dopamine and serotonin. And so oral contraceptives are just rampant and many people need them so they don't get pregnant, but you should be resupplying the nutrients that steal your mind. So multiple vitamin omega-3 fatty acids. Why?

We did a study here at Amen Clinics on 50 consecutive patients and showed 49 of them had suboptimal levels because we're just not getting the omega-3s in our diet. I remember my niece when she was pregnant, your ratio of omega-6s, so it's a different kind of fatty acid, to omega-3s, well, it should be two to one or three to one omega-6s to omega-3s to have a healthy balance. Well, hers was 42 to one because she didn't like fish. And so she never ate fish. And it's really hard to get omega-3s purely through your diet unless you like fish. But then fish has its own issues with mercury and so on that. And omega-3 fatty acids, when you're low in them, inflammation,

heart disease, depression, bipolar disorder, suicidal behavior, ADHD, dementia, and obesity. So I just think all of us should take high quality, multiple vitamins every day, and then high quality omega-3. Okay. I'm sorry. You got to add probiotics to that. You have to. And probably vitamin D. Speak. I just did. I mean, even you just said, named half of the medications that like basically deplete, you know, that cause problems with your stomach and with digestion.

Well, in the book, the next section is on vitamin D. Okay, thank you. Is so important. And then I have specific supplements for your memory. And it's along the Bright Minds format. So what are the supplements to boost blood flow and retirement and aging, to decrease retirement and aging to help with inflammation. So yes, omega-3 fatty acids, probiotics, but also curcumins.

And if you go to BrainMD, we have all of those. And curcumins also help with anti, like they're an anti-inflammatory. So when I think of the basics, there's the basics that like help everybody. They're sort of like your catch-all like basics. And then you've got your brain supplements, like for improving memory or giving you focus or whatever you know that are that are sort of that add-on but these basics you you need for general health just as a to get you you know digesting food and feeling well and then there are also supplements for your brain type everybody's's different. If you go to brainhealthassessment.com, you can actually find your brain type for free. It's a test to take you about five or six minutes.

And you had a situation in your family where there was conflict and one of the people had type three. And when she went on serotonin mode support, she did so much on both of them. They had sort of opposite issues and they could not be in the same house. It was actually making me fairly crazy. Cause I'm like, if you two don't get this together, like I'm going to go crazy. So now we've got them and now they adore each other. It's like the funniest thing. It's awesome.

We love, but every time she gets close, the mom gets close to running out of her supplements. Like everyone in the family is like paying attention. Oh my God, make sure she has her supplements. Stay with us. When we come back, we're going to talk about the X factor. So it's going to be the week of the X factor, which what are the big lessons we've learned

from looking at 150,000 brain scans that can in fact help you feel better fast. 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 Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.