Change Your Brain Every Day - Does Holding Hands with Someone Affect Your Brain Waves?

Episode Date: March 21, 2018

When you hold someone’s hand, there is a surprising side effect in your brain waves. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen describe this phenomenon, and how it can either help or hurt your emotional state of being.

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. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back, everybody. We're so excited for this podcast. There's a new study and I actually put it in my new book, Feel Better Fast and Make It Last. It's coming out this November. And it's a study from the University of Colorado at Boulder that showed that when romantic partners,

that's us, most of the time, hold hands with a partner in pain, their brain waves sink together and her or his pain subsides. So I read that study and and I'm like, holding hands, our brainwaves will sink. So you want to be very careful who you hold hands with. Who you hold brainwaves with. Because you're going to get their deranged brain into yours.

That's sort of like channeling. So you sync up. That's really cool. Well, I'm going to tell you something that like totally changes my brainwaves. I love it when you guys send in testimonials. These are so much fun. So I just want to read a couple really fast because they make my day.

So thank you for doing that. Send more, send more. The fact that you guys take time to tell us how this is helping you in some way is very meaningful to us. So let's see. We've got this one from, well, it's code, so I don't know.

These podcasts are great in helping one stay vigilant in making a health a top priority. We watched the 26 online videos, bought the Brain Warrior Way book and cookbook, now have a ping pong table and are playing regularly, changed our eating habits and take Brain and Body Max power supplements. I listen to the podcast more than once and keep me motivated." And they keep me motivated.

That's a brain warrior right there. She's a brain warrior. Doing everything. So we love that. And then this one. And she's given herself extra years to her life. Right, for sure. And creating warriors around her. Right, because her whole family is getting involved. So I love this one too. I enjoy listening to Dr. Daniel and Tana Amon. I have an adult dependent daughter with ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety disorder. Hearing what Tana experienced as a child helped me to understand how the traumatic events my daughter experienced as a child have affected her brain and how it causes her to react as she does in certain situations.

I had already incorporated many of the healthy eating habits in our family meals, and I'm hoping to kill the aunt's process with, will help her with her negative thoughts. And I love that because sometimes I feel like we just are exposing some of my crazy stories and, and I wonder if we should always do that, but to know that it helps anyone is really helpful. So thank you for that. Well, that's exactly why we do this. Right.

To help you be a warrior, be arm prepared and aware so that you can really win the fight of your life. And that is keeping your brain healthy throughout life so you will love your life and your wife and your kids with the best brain possible. Because with a healthy brain comes a healthy life. But we have to go back to this holding hands. I just thought it was so interesting, especially because we did a podcast on chronic pain.

Right. was so interesting especially because we did a podcast on chronic pain right and some of the simple things you can do involve things that have no side effects right and right unless you hold the hand of the wrong person then it has side effects you don't want to stalker out of this whole thing so the other thing I thought was interesting about this so you're talking about syncing up brain waves, but it's really interesting because it also does, think about, because we also did a previous podcast on oxytocin. Holding hands and hugging, we know, gives you a little burst of oxytocin. So that would definitely decrease chronic pain. That's a little different than

what this study focuses on, but it does that in addition. Right, so things like massage can be very helpful in healing. Most people don't I mean all of your skin has nerve cells that go to your brain to many different areas of your brain that's one of the reasons that acupuncture right works an acupressure works so doing body work I'm listening to a book by Bessel van der Kolk called The Body Keeps the Score about post-traumatic stress disorder and how often doing body work can be helpful in decreasing the emotional intensity of trauma. Right. I think this is so interesting that I put it in feel better fast and make it last because it's so simple to do if you're in pain or even emotional pain, holding hands.

So those of you listening, we're holding hands now. We're going to hold hands through this whole podcast. And you know, when you're just dating and it's like, well, when do I grab her hand? When can I hold her hand? It becomes a very important moment, right? It's a very important bonding moment. Well, and I love when we're walking and we hold hands. It just sort of puts you in a good mood. Like, it's weird. Well, but again, you have to be careful on whose hand you hold. Because if you're holding the hand of someone who's angry, for example, then your brainwaves are going to start to sink to that as well.

And now maybe your positivity can overcome it, but you have to know that there's a risk of being influenced by what's going on in another person's head. One of the reasons we say that the people you hang out with matter, they can determine the length of your life sometimes. Well, and people are contagious. And I think, in our situation,

we have made each other better. Right? Because we weren't all that great in relationships before. Neither one of us were that great, were we? It's always about fit, right? So here we are sort of admitting that. It's about fit, but we are a good fit. Right.

I mean, I would tell you I'm just like a wonderful person, but it didn't sort of show up in the relationship. It doesn't if you're with the wrong person. That I had. And if you're not holding hands in the relationship. It doesn't if you're with the wrong person. That I had. And if you're not holding hands in a relationship, that's sort of telling. A bad sign. Yeah. It's telling that if you're not holding hands, you're also not syncing your brainwave patterns, but you're not syncing your thoughts and your ideas. Well, and clearly there's a little bit of a disconnect if you're not sinking your thoughts and your ideas well and clearly there's a little bit

of a disconnect if you're not affectionate at all with your partner but um yeah no it's it's trouble yeah now what you said though is very important that even though both of us i would argue because i know you super well and you know me super well both of us, I would argue, because I know you super well, and you know me super well, both of us are good people. We're mission-driven. We're kind. We want to do the right thing. But with the people before, who were also good people, that it just didn't sink right.

Yeah, the fit was wrong yeah the fit was wrong the fit was wrong and that led to chronic unhappiness yeah and stress um and so you know i liked you so much when i first met you so the first thing i had to do obviously was scan you. You know, people are starting to use the Brain Warrior Wave podcast code to come to the clinic and get scanned. I'm so excited. Well, hopefully what they're doing too, if you're sharing it and giving the code to someone else,

our hope is give it to as many people as you want. But the hope is that you don't just give them the code, have them listen to the podcast. So look, the podcast is free. You just give them the code, have them listen to the podcast. So look, the podcast is free. You can give them the code if you want. We're not gonna like, there's no code police. But the goal is for you to build a community. The goal is for you to have a community of people

who think like you do. We wanna get people healthy. That's our goal, it's why we're doing this. It's why we gave you the code to begin with, right? It's to spread the word. So. Well, and the code gives them with, right? It's to spread the word. Well, and the code gives them a discount to come to Amen Clinics. And one of the reasons I wanted to scan you is, yes, I wanted to see what I was up against with your brain.

Up against? Really? I wanted to see how healthy or unhealthy it was. And I surprised you. And it was very healthy. It was busy. And there had been trauma, which you talked about. And then what I did is, you know, paid for 10 EMDR sessions, right? Because there was trauma. And so getting psychological help is a sign that you're smart. And you took it. Like right away, you took it.

It's a sign that it's not about ego. It's about being better. So many people go, I'm not going to go get help. I am not going to get help. There's nothing the matter with me. But see, I said that at first too. And this is to the people out there who are like that. I said that at first too, because I had been hurt by the traditional psychiatric system. When they put, if you listen to a couple of the previous podcasts, um, I was put on Prozac. It

was the wrong medicine for me. I was depressed. I did, I went down the wrong trail and I had seen that same thing happen to other people in my family. so I wasn't open to it at first but there was something about when I was able to see it does that make sense I was like oh wow that's so cool and so then I was able to actually like physically see it there was something different about that for me right and I was a I was a neurosurgical ICU nurse so that sort of made sense well and what made sense to you is I often say nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. You didn't even want to date one. No, I did not.

No one wants to be labeled as defective or crazy or abnormal. When, in fact, we think most of them are a little bit off. But everybody, including you, wanted a better brain. So what if mental health is really brain health? And, you know, given how smart you are, you're like, oh, I want this better. Right. I want this. I'm very competitive that way.

Yes, you are. It's the curse of the beautiful woman. Yeah. So he was, he was scanning my brain to make sure there was like no major defects. I was scanning my brain. Cause I'm like, I bet this is going to be really good. So I was like horrified. Cause there was like, you could see the trauma and I'm like, like, it's not, it's not that good. Cause to me, like the trauma, I'm like, so I was really upset actually. Cause you could see this diamond pattern of trauma there. And you could see where I bumped my head in a car accident.

So I was really upset because it wasn't perfect. So I was like, okay, what do I have to do to make it better? Because I was not happy. Which is what high-performance people do. They don't get bummed it's not perfect. Oh, I was mad. They get motivated to be perfect. They fall in love, if you will, with their brain, which is what you did.

And now, a dozen years later, you've written eight books. You've written six cookbooks. Eight books in seven years. Who knew? I was like, what is going on? You never told me I was going to have to work that hard. Well, when you held my hand. I synced up. Oh, no. That's what happened.

I've never been able to explain it until just this moment. He has written 30 books, published 30 major books, and like 10 other supplementary books. So 40 books total. So that's what happened. You held my hand and it just like downloaded. So be careful whose hand you hold. That's hilarious. People are contagious.

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. 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 every month.