Change Your Brain Every Day - Here is How Lyme Disease Can Damage Your Brain

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

In continuation of our coverage of The End of Mental Illness Live Class from January, this episode of the podcast features more content on how to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the phenomenon of “mindstorms” and how they pushed a sweet 9 year-old boy to the brink of suicide. The Amens then discuss how certain infections can sneak into your biological system and secretly create havoc in your brain and body. To take The End of Mental Illness Brain Health Revolution 6 Week Class and Challenge, visit https://endofmentalillness.com/brainhealthchallenge/

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. And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us. For this week's series, what we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class.

And the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you. And we hope that you will join us in the challenge. When I was a medical student, 1980, I think it was, Jack Dreyfus, who's the famous founder of the Dreyfus Mutual Fund, he had seen psychiatrists for a long time. He struggled with anxiety and depression and suicidal thoughts. And he read about an anti-seizure medication called Dilantin. He said he got his psychiatrist, convinced his psychiatrist to give him a couple of doses of it. He said within three days, he didn't need his psychiatrist anymore. The suicidal thoughts went away. His depression went away. His anxiety went away. And he wrote a book that I read called A Wonderful Medication

Has Been Overlooked. And he was talking about the use of anti-seizure medications in psychiatry. Now, is that a mental illness? Or a brain illness. Or a brain illness. What do you think? I think like a lot of things that we look at here. It's a brain illness. And that's when I started reading Dietrich Blumer's work from Emery on temporal lobe dysrhythmias, which means the rhythm doesn't fire right. And it just changed my practice. And I have so many great stories about mind storms. And this is one of my favorite ones.

I actually opened the revised version of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life with Tommy's story. He came to see us from Orlando, Florida, nine years old. And he wasn't on my schedule. He was going to see one of the other doctors. And my assistant said, you have to go meet Tommy. And when I found him, he recognized me. He said, hey, Dr. Amen, I have a left temporal lobe problem. I'm like, really? Like, how do you know that? He said, I read the book. I took the checklist in the book. And I'm like, but how do you really know that? And he said, I have a really bad temper. And you say people have bad tempers, have temporal lobe problems. It's true. And I used to see ghosts. I'm like, what? He said, I used to see these green things float in front of my eyes and I

thought they were ghosts and they would scare me. And then when I read your book, I realized those are illusions that people who have temporal lobe problems get. So a lot of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, they'll say, I see things. But the doctor doesn't go, tell me about that. And, you know, I mean, sometimes people will have hallucinations of clear formed images of somebody yelling at them or speaking to them and like hearing voices but that just reminds me of someone that we know that we've been trying to help recently who was starting to develop paranoia thinking that she was being followed because of these lights she'd see these lights coming out of the ground is that sort of what you're talking

about yeah no voices no people just she. Just she thought because there were lights, there must be someone behind it. And for her, she actually has this thing called the Erlen syndrome. But does she have a left temporal lobe thing as well? Well, she had 19 car accidents, so one might suspect. But Tommy, I'm talking to Tommy, and he looked at me with his big, beautiful blue eyes, and he said, and last year, to get rid of the bad thoughts in my head, I tried to kill myself. At nine? Which has broke my heart. Oh, my, no, my youngest patient tried to kill himself was four.

Intentionally? Intentionally, yeah, because he was so depressed. I mean, you don't think children can be depressed. Well, I know they can be depressed. Children can be depressed and have suicidal ideation. And you've got to wonder what's going on in their brain. And they basically say, I'm insane because I want to look at the brain, but I don't think so. And when we looked at his scan, the arrow is pointing to his

left temporal lobe, which is hurt. So he has this thing called Lyme and storms. He was right. And so how do we treat it? Sometimes we'll use anti-seizure medications, the ketogenic diet. And actually, I'm going to do an interview on our podcast. Check out our podcast, Brain Warriors Way podcast, coming up soon with Dr. Josh Axe, who wrote on the ketogenic diet. And sometimes neurofeedback can help. We've seen it just help so many people. So that's the M m either mental health issues or

mind storms the i is immunity or infections and did i tell you um they released episode five so yesterday they released episode five and justin bieber Bieber's new docu-series, Seasons. And that's the episode I'm in. I may be in one of the ones coming up. We filmed for a long time. But Justin had the mind storms. So he had that temporal lobe dysrhythmia that I talked about. He actually has a lot of these risk factors.

Well, you've got to imagine someone who tours that much, isn't sleeping, isn't eating right, isn't taking care of themselves. They're just set up for it. Yeah. So he had low blood flow. Retirement and aging didn't apply because he's young, except he had ADD when he was a child. And when you have ADD, learning is painful for you. And the retirement and aging strategy is new learning. But he didn't have the attention span for that.

I is for inflammation. He had high inflammatory markers. G is genetics. He had a family history of depression and addiction. H is head trauma. He had three concussions of depression and addiction. H is head trauma. He had three concussions when he was young. T is toxins. He started using marijuana when he was 13 years old.

He talks very openly about his drug use, and it's pretty crazy. I mean, he got to where he was doing drugs to go to sleep, doing drugs to wake up, doing drugs to get through the day. I mean, he was doing that lean cough syrup, crazy stuff that kids do now and just crazy stuff all day long. So out of the first six risk factors, he's got virtually all of them. And then he had mind storms and he came out publicly and said he had Lyme disease. Actually, it's more complicated than that. But he had this thing called an autoimmune encephalitis, which means his immune system turned on itself and actually saw his brain as the enemy. Yeah, it was crazy. And started attacking it.

He had antibodies to his own dopamine receptors. Well, I just remember, I remember how sad it was because I remember long after he stopped doing drugs, that kid was just trying so hard to do everything, but it was like his brain was fighting him. It was just so sad. And so immunity infections are really important. So he came out publicly and said he had Lyme disease. There are also other infections like toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite you get from cats who eat infected rats. And toxoplasmosis has been associated with Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, bipolar disorder,

schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts. And I just thought I'd share this with you. You love this story. I love this stuff. So toxoplasmosis, it's a parasite. You can see it in the upper right corner. Somebody's asking, what are you two drinking? It's not vodka.

It's tea. It's non-caffeinated herbal tea. Toxoplasmosis infects many animals, but it can actually only sexually reproduce in cats. And so it's looking, this parasite is looking for cats. So when it infects a rat, it turns the rat into a cat-seeking missile. Okay, that's just the craziest thing. So Toxo releases a chemical in the rat's nucleus accumbens and hooks the rat on cat urine. And so typically when a rat smells cat urine, it's like danger, danger, danger,

and it avoids them. But when it's infected by toxo, toxo hijacks the rat's pleasure centers to make it fall in love with something that will hurt it. Do you see any connection to drug abuse? Heroin, yes. To heroin, right? And so the rat goes toward the cat rather than away from it. So the cat then eats the rat and Toxo gets in the cat and gets to have sex and reproduce. It's the classic tale of eat, pray, love. Really? I love that.

You just, yeah. So who's really in control of your life? So parasites can hijack your brain. Well, I mean, are we in control or is your microbiome in control? The hundred trillion bugs you have and you're getting. When you were young, because of the stress. And the antibiotics. And all of the antibiotics. You had upper and lower GIs by the time you were four.

Yeah, I was a frequent flyer at the hospital. And so your unhealthy microbiome was controlling your anxiety, right? When you were nine, you had separation anxiety. You were having panic attacks. You were sort of a mess. Yeah, mono at nine. Right. And when I asked you about gut and early trauma.

Don't shrink me. Don't shrink me. Listen, shrinking you. I was trying to get your microbiome healthy. I'm a shrink me. Don't shrink me. Listen, shrinking, you're always trying to get your microbiome healthy. I'm a trauma nurse. Don't shrink me. Anyways, before and after, your brain can heal. I have seen the light. So one of my favorite all-time stories, actually, Deb's mother may be watching.

Adriana's mother may be watching uh adriana's mother may be watching um adriana beautiful i love this story it's one of my favorite stories 16 her family goes to one of the national parks on vacation and when they get to their um when they get to their cabin, they're surrounded by six deer. I mean, most of us would think of this as a magical moment. And they thought of it as a magical moment. But 10 days later, Adriana starts hallucinating and becomes aggressive. And she's never acted like this before. But she has an uncle that had spent 25 years in the Napa State Hospital, one of the state psychiatric hospitals in California for schizophrenia.

I'll tell you the rest of that story in a bit. So what does the family do? They take you to a psychiatric hospital. I mean, that's what people do, right? If you show up to the emergency room and you're hearing things and you're aggressive, they'll commit you to a psychiatric hospital. Well, first they're going to give you a bunch of meds. They're going to make you feel – And medications didn't work, so she then went to another hospital, and then they went to Stanford, and the doctor at Stanford told the mother that she needed to accept the fact that Adriana had schizophrenia and that she would have to take this medication for the rest of her life. And Deb, the mother, was having none of that. No, schizophrenia can start.

I mean, the typical age is 19 um paranoid schizophrenia more late 20s that's what i thought but um the mom was having none of it it ended up um bringing her to us literally wait wait you skipped a whole part of the story wasn't she like in a hospital for a while dropped out of high school wasn't this like a whole part of the story. Wasn't she like in a hospital for a while, dropped out of high school? Wasn't this like a whole thing? She was sick. And six months later, she's a shell of herself. That doesn't even look like the same kid.

And she came to see us and her brain's on fire. And thank goodness one of my doctors go, why is her brain on fire? And heard the history of the deers because lime comes often from deer ticks. And Adriana, and not everybody shows up positive. Only about 50% of people can you actually find lab evidence for it, but she had lab evidence for it. and on an antibiotic over the next year she got her life back and uh such a pretty girl she is such a pretty but she went to pepperdine she ends up graduating from pepperdine so she ends up yeah so is this a mental illness then she went to the university of london right got a master's Yeah. She would have spent her life going down,

you know, the psychiatric hole to hell. Well, and so, yes, and now beautiful, normal, every day about noon, I get a text from her mother, how can I pray for you today? from her mother how can i pray for you today so her mother has gone through so much of my own life crises right my mom broke her hip my mom has shingles and she's always praying but this story just hit me so hard because it's like as someone who has a has a child that that's was around you know there was i just I can't imagine your child starts to suffer this much and you're told, put your child in a hospital, you're never going to see them graduate from school. You're never going to see them get married.

Well, the doctor wouldn't say that, but to say you're going to have to be on psychiatric medication for the rest of your life at a place like Stanford without ever looking at the brain, without ever looking at, well, what are the other causes of psychosis like Lyme? Right, but most of us think of paranoid schizophrenia as being pretty extreme. So that's going to change your life big time. And when I hear this story and I'm like, wow, and then you see this picture of her graduating, that's pretty intense. It's pretty intense. And her uncle, who was hospitalized for 25 years at Napa State Hospital, and his sister was trying to get him out and basically had to go to court to do it, showed up with co-infections for Lyme. And you just wonder how many people are being diagnosed with mental illnesses when they

have brain health issues. So I talk about it a lot in The End of Mental Illness. I would dearly love you to pre-order the book and then go to endofmentalillness.com. We have all sorts of gifts for you when you pre-order the book, including a coupon for 50% off at BrainMD, our supplement company, along with the cookbook you did, the 10-Day Brain Boost and so on. So End of Mental Illness,

one of my favorite stories in it. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, So end of mental illness, one of my favorite stories in it. Amen Clinics, or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD. You can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.