Change Your Brain Every Day - Get Your Prefrontal Cortex Working Like a CEO

Episode Date: December 7, 2017

The prefrontal cortex is like the executive part of the brain: it’s responsible for focus, forethought, impulse control, and empathy. But what happens when we have trouble in our frontal lobes? In Part 3 of the “Success Starts Here” series, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen explain how taking care of our frontal lobes is essential to success.

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 talking about Success Starts Here. We are on the third lesson for Success Starts Here, and this is regarding the CEO in your brain. Think like a CEO. Strengthen your brain's executive center to make great decisions and avoid ones that ruin your life. So we started with love, passion, purpose, because it really provides energy and motivation for your life.

But if you don't have a break in your head, the passion and purpose can get out of control and you will crash. And so this lesson is really about the prefrontal cortex, largest in humans and any other animal by far. It's 30% of the human brain, 11% of the chimpanzee brain, 7% of your dog's brain, 3% of your cat's brain. That's why they need nine lives. 1% of the mouse's brain. It's called the executive part of the brain because it's like the boss at work. And it's involved with the most human functions, focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, empathy, empathy, learning from the mistakes that you make. Right. I think this is so interesting also because as I got to know what we do more and what you, when I was first involved in what you were doing, you know, it's easy to hear, oh, my frontal lobes were hurt,

or they had a head injury and they hurt the front part of their brain. But you don't really understand the long-term ramifications of that, right? So if that CEO takes a vacation, right? It's a really- When the cat's away. The mice will play.

The mice will play. So it's really important to understand why if you damage this. So you wonder with all this rash of men behaving badly. Yeah, I'm not letting them off that easily. That they didn't have lower frontal lobes. So decreased empathy and made decisions that ultimately came and ruined. Maybe some of them.

But I'm going to go back to our previous lesson about dopamine. Well, I have. That they may right worn those pleasure centers out right and it's a power wait power stimulates dopamine but does it it's a combination of your pleasure centers hijacking the brain and your prefrontal cortex not being strong enough to rein it in. So think of the elephant and the rider. So your limbic or emotional or your pleasure center urges and can the rider control the elephant? So if the rider is weak and doesn't carry a pointed stick, then the pleasure centers win and you act out, even though it could hurt you or hurt somebody else. And so if your brain is always doing this

dance between pleasure, motivation, drive, and breaking that drive. So I like to think of it, the prefrontal cortex is like brakes on a car. And you're at the top of a mountain and you have a Ferrari and you want to have a fun time going down the mountain. But what happens very close to the top of the mountain if your brakes don't work? Right. You crash. Right. Right.

You hurt yourself. You hurt other people. And that's what happens when the prefrontal cortex is low. That is why you should never let girls hit soccer balls with their head. And more girls. Brand new study out just this week that the tracks in their brain are actually thinner more delicate in girls than they are in boys ouch there's one study that said 90 percent of female iq is in her frontal lows where for males it's more widely described distributed so that's kind of sad because you can... So a woman can really damage... This is why this is so important because when there are problems in the prefrontal cortex,

short attention span, distractibility, poor planning, lack of perseverance, impulsivity, erratic decision-making, chronically late, poor time management, disorganization, procrastination, unavailability of emotions, trouble expressing your thoughts, bad judgment, lack of empathy, trouble learning from experience. You say yes way too often. No is actually a frontal lobe function. Oh, that's so funny because you say I say no too often. Do we want to have that discussion here? You always say the first words out of my mouth are no. Lack of conscientiousness, which is not you. But frontal lobe issues go with a higher incidence of school failure, divorce, job failure, legal issues, speeding tickets, incarceration,

financial problems, and mental health issues, especially ADD and addictions. So you can see protecting this part of your brain is critical to being healthy. My best example or my favorite example of the prefrontal cortex is the movie Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, which is Pinocchio's conscience. I mean, I just encourage everybody to watch Pinocchio and really pay attention to Jiminy Cricket because he is the prefrontal cortex in the movie. And Breaking Bad. No, I hate that show.

But I'm not doing it in reference to that show. It's when your breaks are bad. Oh, I see. Your life is bad. Yeah, that show gives me the eebie-jeebies. Jerry Seinfeld said, the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that no one should ever hear. Right.

And when you hurt your frontal lobes, they get out. If I told you about the time I was at a conference with a friend of mine, and she had been in a car accident, damaged her frontal lobes, and two overweight women were in front of us talking about why they were overweight. And one said to the other, I don't know why I'm overweight. I just eat like a bird. And my friend, so everyone could hear said, yes, like a bleeping condor. That's terrible. That's terrible. And they were so offended. And I turned beet red because I was so embarrassed. And I looked at her like, what is the matter with you? And she put her hand over her mouth and she said, oh no, did that get out? So we all have, and you know, I was just on CNN talking about the first president Bush,

who has been reported by multiple women, six now, to be grabbing women inappropriately. That's so weird. And he's known to have something called vascular Parkinsonism, which is you have vascular problems anywhere in your brain, they're everywhere in your brain. So they're also affecting his frontal lobes. And how many guys, when they see a cute girl, don't want to grab her, but their frontal lobes inhibit.

I'm sorry, go back to that. What? The guys will understand. How many times when you see a cute girl, you go, oh, well, that would be nice. But you inhibit it because you have a wife like mine. Or you just know it's inappropriate. If you think that we don't know you're thinking that, like we know you're thinking that, okay? But you don't act on it because you have frontal lobe function. But if you hurt or damage your frontal lobes, if you don't sleep, you have lower frontal lobe function.

That makes sense. If you don't eat, you have lower frontal lobe function. That makes sense. If you don't eat, you have lower frontal lobe function. You get more car accidents when you don't sleep. If you have a high sugar meal, two hours later, you have low frontal lobe function because it's spiked blood sugar and then dropped blood sugar. So the prefrontal cortex involved with conscientiousness, which means it's involved in longevity. Because in the longest longevity study ever done, 90 years, they found that what went with longevity was not what people would think. It wasn't happiness. It wasn't a lack of stress.

It wasn't a lack of anxiety. In fact, the don't worry, be happy people died the earliest. Crazy, right? From accidents and preventable illness. We have an entire society focusing on don't worry, be happy. Yes. Bobby McFerrin was wrong. Right. Don't worry, be happy.

And the prefrontal cortex is a late bloomer. So most people don't know that. It actually doesn't finish developing until you're 25. But you know who does know that? The insurance companies. That's why your insurance rates change at 25. Right. Because kids get more accidents. So what disrupts prefrontal cortex? There's two processes that go on during development. One is called pruning. Your brain gets rid of tracts it doesn't use, which is why early learning strategies are

important for kids. And a process called myelination. And what that means is over time, all your nerve cells get wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin. And myelin makes nerve cells work 10 to 100 times faster, more efficiently. So it's like putting high-speed internet in. Right. Or putting rubber on copper wires, insulation on copper wires.

They just, you know, you can direct the energy in a positive way. It doesn't get scattered all over the place. And that's why teenagers act the way they do. Right. Because they're myelinating their frontal lobes. But look at the list of things that disrupt myelin. Smoking, alcohol, drug use, marijuana use, depression, ADHD, brain trauma, toxins, infections, inflammation, a lousy diet. Teenagers are known for lousy diets. Low omega-3 fatty acid levels, new study, 97% of the population is low in omega-3 fatty acids. Low vitamins B, C, and D, low zinc, low cholesterol, because people think fat's the enemy. Fat is your friend.

Low-fat diets. Myelin is 80% fat, excessive stress, limited exercise, and less than optimal sleep. Isn't that nuts? So how do you strengthen the executive part of your brain? So So really though, that list sounds a lot like the other things. Because what's good for your brain is good for your body. What's bad for your brain is bad for your body. So that list, it's the same thing that hurts other things as well. Smoking will kill you.

I mean, it gives you cancer, right? Or emphysema or whatever. Having low oxygen in your body is bad for your brain. Right. So I mean, it's body is bad for your brain. Right. So there, I mean, there, it's the same list.

It's always the same. Right. It's crazy that we've known this for, and we still know it and we keep saying it and yet we keep doing it. So how do you strengthen the prefrontal cortex? You practice saying no to yourself for behaviors that are not helpful. Right. See, this is one of the reasons I like martial arts for kids.

Again, like you said, not getting hit in the head, but I really like the discipline involved. It really does teach discipline, and I love that. Practice saying no to others, except your husband. Really? Double standard here. People are taking on too many things. Yeah, for sure.

Yes, to too many things. When Tony Blair, who is the prime minister of the United Kingdom, said the number one job of a leader is to say no. Yeah, which I would assume you have to do a lot. And Steve Jobs said, I say no to hundreds of things so I can say yes to one great thing. Right, to the important things. Agree. So ask yourself, does this thing I'm going to say yes to fit with the goals I have for my life? What is it?

Which one of our friends had that? Where did we hear that? I love it. fit with the goals I have for my life. What is it? Who is, who, which one of our friends had that? Where did we hear that? I love it because if it's, cause it just works. It's like a really quick test. If I can't say hell yes, then it's hell no.

Right. If you can't say hell yes, I should do it. Then you need to say hell no. And that actually works your decision. And then you want to strengthen your decision-making. How do you do that? You sleep seven hours or more.

You have a healthy blood sugar. Remember the voodoo doll study? Yes, hilarious. Researchers took 107 couples and measured their blood sugar before bedtime. And then they gave them voodoo dolls. And they said, we want you to express your feelings about your partner with the pins in the dolls and the people who had the lowest blood sugar had twice the number of pins in the dolls see i think which is totally 10 right i think if i don't

eat i don't really need a voodoo doll for everyone to know how I'm feeling. It's not good. Hangry. Yes, I get very hangry. That's what we call it. And then ask yourself, does this behavior fit the goals I have for my life? But you first have to have goals for your life. And then daily prayer, meditation, self-hypnosis, all of those have been shown to strengthen the prefrontal cortex.

Yep. Love it. Embrace change. Coming up next, success starts here. 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 Warrior's Way and The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.