Change Your Brain Every Day - Gut Bacteria: What You Need to Know

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Some of you may find this a little gross, but did you know that you have trillions of bugs living in your gut? What’s stranger is that they’re the good guys! In fact, when you kill those bugs off, your health suffers dramatically. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen continue their master class on nutrition with a comprehensive guide to gut bacteria.

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. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

In this episode, we're continuing our coverage from our Amen Clinics company presentation. So this is where Tan and I actually taught all of Amen Clinics on nutrition. You may notice a slight change in sound quality, but the information was just too good not to share. This episode is all about the trillions of bugs in your gut and how they may actually be your best friends. We hope you enjoy it. So what decreases healthy gut bacteria?

Medications. So that's kind of crazy, right? So we just talked about acids, but one of the biggest ones are NSAIDs or Advil or the generic form of Advil. So you want to be very careful. So all of those, they damage your gut lining. And so a lot of people have difficulty with those. You get things like gastritis. Well, why? Because it's really burning a hole like in that gut lining. You have to be really careful with those. So steroids. Yeah. Let me push on that just a little bit. Practical point. You have a headache. Ibuprofen is actually better than Tylenol. So there's a fascinating study. People who use Tylenol as their pain medication, on average, get Alzheimer's disease two and a half years earlier than the general population, because Tylenol is no good for you either because it can negatively affect your liver. People who use ibuprofen get Alzheimer's disease two and a half

years later than the general population because it's also an anti-inflammatory. So if you have a choice, well, one, try to avoid things that cause pain for you but i'm going to push back on that so so um yes taking it for an acute situation is one thing taking it chronically is a bad idea because it decreases inflammation initially but as your gut begins to deteriorate it starts to increase inflammation so now you get this reverse. So take food. So this is now, yes. Right. When people did the Brain Warrior's Way, decreasing pain was one of the better outcomes of it. We had 21,000 people sign up for a course that we taught together called the Brain Warrior's Way and decreasing pain. But if you struggle with pain, yes, get rid of the bad food, first thing to do.

But I have had chronic knee pain ever since college when I tore my ACL. And what I do, and it doesn't hurt at all in the last year, so Tanya helped me with Equiscope, putting electricity into the joint. Every day I take our SAMe because SAMe has been shown not only to be helpful for depression, but it's also helpful for pain. For sure. And our brain curcumins, I take three of those every day, and I take four fish oil.

Why? Because they all have anti-inflammatory, anti-pain effects, and so that's my little cocktail for my knee so that I can get my 10,000 steps every day. Brain curcumins, SAMe, and omega-3 power. Okay. So stress sugar causes a decrease in the good bugs and an overgrowth of candida, which is a fungus. And one of the things that is the most likely to increase your pain fast in your joints? Artificial sweeteners, especially the yellow one, especially Splenda. Many people don't know Splenda was actually developed initially as a pesticide,

and it kills bugs. It's fantastic if you're trying to kill it. And it tastes great, not good for your gut bug. Allergies and insomnia. So soldier, shift work, all of that decreases healthy bacteria. I just thought about something. You could use that for your ant killing sessions. Say that again? Use Splenda for your ant killing sessions.

Oh, we should have Splenda when we teach people to kill the ants. Yes. All right. to kill the ants yes all right so these things are killing good gut bugs toxins infections low omega-3s you know we did a study here 50 consecutive patients who are not taking omega-3s 49 of them had suboptimal levels. How many of you, when we did your omega-3 test, had lousy omega-3s in your body? Before you started taking fish oil. How many? Isn't that nuts?

It's nuts. It's like the easiest thing to fix. Low vitamin D, which affects 80% of the population, radiation, chemotherapy, are those of you that love beating your body up with intense exercise. So I'm a fan of moderate exercise marathon.

You'll never see me do that. Why? What? The first marathon, the Greeks won the war against Persia. And from marathon Greece to Athens, this poor kid ran 26.2 miles, we won the war, and then he died.

Anything that has that as an origin is not for me. I always leave that part out. High-intensity exercise and short duration is different than high-intensity exercise, long duration like marathons. I'm sorry, but I like high intensity exercise. Now, HIIT exercising is good, right? It's my medicine. Go as fast as you can for a minute, and then walk for like four,

and then fast as you can. You do that five times, that's the perfect exercise. You like me better when I do my high intensity exercise. I do. I like you all the time. But you like me better. Greatest danger to your microbiome. So antibiotics, we talked about some of them already.

So the NSAIDs, oral contraceptives, antibiotics. So interesting, most of it's not in our food. More than 70% of the antibiotics that get into your food, not into your mouth because you're prescribed them, they're in our food supply. So that's really interesting. So buy antibiotic-free food. You want to make sure that the meats you're buying,

any dairy products, meats, anything like that, you're buying antibiotic-free. So if they're raising them humanely, they don't need antibiotics. They give them the antibiotics because they they're raising them humanely, they don't need antibiotics. They give them the antibiotics because they're not raising them humanely. So you eat whatever the animals ate. It's a little weird. Why would the animals need antibiotics?

Because when they're not raised humanely, when they are injecting them with steroids and keeping them in confined spaces they're not designed just like you weren't born for that to happen right they get sick and when they start to get and they're they're all together in confined spaces they begin to get ill a lot so they give them the antibiotics partially to prevent it and partially to treat it and so that's why that happened so we weren't like our food system now, it wasn't designed to be that way. That's why people are always like, why do I have to do all of this now? People didn't do this, you know, a thousand years ago, right? They didn't do this a

thousand years ago. We didn't eat that way a thousand years ago, right? We didn't do the things to our food supply that we did, you know, hundreds of years ago. We weren't able to store it in mass amounts the way we do now and raise it the way we do now. You want to talk about this little girl? She's really cute, isn't she? She was a mess. So early bonding issues. So it's interesting how when your gut is affected, it can really affect the rest of your life.

Bonding issues, anxiety, just so many other problems. I remember when I first met Daniel, we were talking and you know it's so annoying, he's got this annoying way of getting you to say things you don't want to say, right? I almost canceled my first date with him because he was a psychiatrist and I thought psychiatrists were just irritating, but now I realize what it really was, I somehow knew he was gonna make me say stuff I didn't want to say. So he gets me talking about my family and and I'm like, oh, yeah, well, when I was four, my uncle was murdered. And I'm saying it very matter-of-factly because, you know, I'm used to all of the craziness that happened in my family. And I remember the police being there and the screaming and the yelling, and I was trying to hide.

And it was really awful. And before that, I had told him, like, you know, I was one of those really sick kids. I was always sick. I was always on antibiotics. I had upper and lower GI studies when I was four so and he goes well how long like when was your uncle murdered and I told him he's like and when did you have the upper and lower GI studies and I'm like within a couple weeks that probably started happening I'm like I know what

you're thinking it wasn't connected he's like So it's, I'm sort of this like hard charging ICU nurse. Um, just, I'm not into the, all of the touchy feely stuff. And I'm like, stop, just stop. Um, but as I really got into what we do and I really started being more conscious and, and just more thoughtful about it, it's when a lot of the problems started and there was a lot of other chaos that was going on. And it's, it's so true. And I just immediately, like at age nine I started with massive panic attacks because of another issue that was happening. And that was the time that I was just like, everybody out like walls, all of the crazy people in my family,

like you need to go away. So, and that affects bonding for sure. So, yeah. So early stress can damage your gut. And if you don't fix it, it actually can negatively impact you for the rest of your life. So what increases healthy gut bacteria? Well, things we call prebiotics. It's basically food for the bugs.

It's food for the probiotics in your gut, for the gut bugs. And basically all of these things are fiber. What increases healthy gut bacteria? So probiotics. So there's probiotic foods like kefir and kombucha, unsweetened yogurt. And I'm not a fan of dairy. And the reason I'm not is 70% of people over the age of five in the United States do not have the enzyme to process lactose.

And so lots of people are lactose intolerant. Almost all of the dairy in the United States is raised with antibiotics and hormones. So I'm not a fan of that. And then I horrified myself one day when I realized you eat whatever the animals ate, or you also eat whatever the animals are feeling. Because when you're sad, when you're depressed, when you're anxious or angry. So think of confined livestock. They are producing certain chemicals in their body, just like you do when you're anxious or you're sad or you're depressed. And so we're actually consuming those negative chemicals as well. So I'm fascinated with warriors.

I like studying warrior cultures and stuff like that. You know who knew that? The Apache. The Apache knew that they wouldn't eat animals. They weren't vegetarians, but they wouldn't eat animals that ate other animals. They would only eat animals that were vegetarian so that they did not consume another animal because they felt that they were consuming whatever that animal had experienced. And they didn't understand, I think, the hormonal part of it, but they understood the feeling that was going on. Kimchi, if you like kimchi. Not for me. I like it.

I don't like sauerkraut. But I love sauerkraut. So whatever works for you. And then supplements like our ProBrain Biotics. And the reason we like that one, it actually studies with it that show it decreases anxiety and decreases depression. And one thing about kombucha, most of the commercial brands you really have to pay attention to,

most of them, because it's so tart and so bitter, they add so much sugar to it. There are a few brands. I have found one that has two grams per serving because it's going to have some natural sugar in it where there's no sugar added and it just has the natural sugar from the fermentation. So look for those.

You do not want one that's got 11 grams, eight grams of sugar in them. And while we're talking, I want you to start just writing down in your notebook or on your phone your five favorite meals because then i have a question for you about them as we go along oh and um organic cane juice what's another name for organic cane juice sure right i mean the health food industry, they're really trying to murder you with false advertising. I found a new one. I thought I had seen all of the terms for sugar.

Corn syrup solids. That's another one. It doesn't say high fructose corn syrup, it just says corn syrup solids. Sure. So when we did the Brain Warriors Way course, Tana actually created this story to help really bring this gut-brain connection. So this is Larry Leakey. And this is going to help you to sort of put it all together and see how we live our lives and how most of us live our lives, how easy it is to have this happen. So this is Larry Leakeyy he goes to work one day gets into a huge fight with his boss thinks his

boss is an idiot and starts yelling at his boss and he gets fired so he's super upset he leaves work he's like i need a drink right i deserve it so he goes has more than one drink he's killing all of his gut bacteria, lays one on, pretty good, goes home, acts like a total idiot. His wife, a little like me, she creates more stress for Larry Leakey, right? She increases his cortisol,

disrupts his digestion just a little bit. She sort of looks like you too. She's very angry that he comes home drunk and is acting like an idiot she's having none of it so she puts him in the dog house this just upsets him even more now he's starting to get really depressed he goes inside he's like i'm not hurting anyone it's only this one time i deserve a break today right so he starts having lots of sugar sugar Sugar feeds the bad bacteria, not the good bacteria. So now he's just increasing the problem even more. All of a sudden, you know, like about a week later, he's starting to have pain. He's having pain in his joints. He's having back pain. He's having

headaches. He doesn't really understand why. He's like, I thought it was a while back, but he's hasn't been, you know, he's been home now. He's, he's fired. So he's like sitting in front of the TV. He's not moving. He's eating junk food. And even though he's not laying one on every day, he's not feeling really well. And he doesn't really understand why. So what's the first thing he does? He reaches for NSAIDs. He reaches for something to help the headache, to help the pain. So he starts taking those regularly. Damages has got further. Now all of a sudden, it's like a month later, and he's like, I don't understand why I keep getting sick.

Like now I've had the sniffles. Now my ears are hurting. I'm just getting sick. Sort of like a lot of us the last three months around here. So he's like more susceptible to everything going on around him. He gets really ill. His immunity is compromised. So he goes to the doctor. The doctor on around him. He gets really ill. His immunity is compromised. So he goes to the doctor.

Doctor says, there's nothing wrong with you. You have a common cold. Go home. Let it just rest. Let it go away. He's like, what? I came to the doctor. I don't have any money. I came so I could spend the last little bit of money I have,

and you're going to tell me to go rest? Doctor's like, oh, my God, another one of these idiots. He's like, okay, fine. I'll give you some antibiotics. Just get out of my office, right? So he prescribes antibiotics for the common cold, which isn't going to help at all. All it's going to do is damage his gut even more.

How many of you go to the doctor expecting to get an antibiotic or get one even when you don't want one, right? How often does that happen? So now he goes home, goes to bed, and all of a sudden, a couple weeks later, now he's depressed. He's got massive fatigue. He's got got digestive issues all of his other symptoms are worse he's got more pain more headaches he just doesn't really feel like doing anything finally his wife who no longer has the dragon face she's like okay fine

now will you listen to me? And she teaches him how to become a brain warrior. It's hysterical. 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. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast.

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