Change Your Brain Every Day - Here’s What You Can Do If You’ve Had Head Trauma

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

If you’ve had a brain injury, you need to put your brain in a healing environment as soon as possible. In the fourth and final episode of “Brain Trauma Awareness Week,” Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen use the BRIGHT MINDS context to discuss a recovery plan for those who have experienced a  traumatic brain injury.

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. So we're back. We're still talking about traumatic brain injuries, and I'm going to again clarify that. These can be from closed head injuries where you never lose consciousness. It could be from a car accident, because if you're like me, I thought it had to be really severe where you cracked your skull and had a brain drain

and all that stuff. Does not have to be that. So if you've ever fallen out of a tree off a fence, had a motorcycle accident, but didn't lose consciousness, anything, a bicycle accident, think about it and think if it's had any impact. If you're suffering or struggling, think about the connection that that could have.

Please listen to the other three episodes that we did on TBI this week. And then we're going to talk about what you can do for TBI. And I am assuming that a lot of it has to do with what part of the brain was injured. And I guess we're going to probably talk about the four circles, right? Bio, psychosocial, spiritual, and how you address that. Well, the most important thing you can do is put your brain in a healing environment as quickly as possible. So what are the things you do right away?

So you get assessed to make sure that you don't have a brain bleed. That's really important. Right. And a lot of doctors recommend a dark room where you do nothing, and they just basically recommend bed rest. The new research is saying that's really not the right thing to do. You don't want to overwork your brain. And if you got it playing sports, you need to go out of that sport

until your brain has completely recovered. And just think, if you have a shoulder injury and you go back too soon, you're much more likely to make the shoulder injury permanent. And with the brain injury, you need to be completely symptom-free before you put yourself at risk. And you know us, we're not fans of risk anyways, even if you've never had a traumatic brain injury, because we don't want you to get one.

So the first thing... I'm assuming that there are some general things that everyone should stop doing, and then some of them are tailored to the individual. Correct. And when we talk about bright minds, when we've done the whole memory rescue group, that's really not just memory rescue, it's concussion rescue or traumatic brain injury rescue is you want to put your brain in a healing environment. You mentioned the four circles,

so they're biological factors. So as we go through bright minds, that's mostly biological. There's also psychological factors, not believing every stupid thing you think. Well, not being in a chronically stressful environment where there's a lot of fighting or a lot of chaos or a lot of just negativity. Because chronic stress elevates inflammation and it also elevates cortisol which prevents healing. So quickly going through Bright Minds as it relates to traumatic brain injury, well we see the low blood flow on the scan because I saw it on yours. And so you want to increase blood flow in a healthy way. So this supplement Ginkgo and venpocetine, we have both of them in Brain and Memory Power Boost that we have from BrainMD.

Hyperbaric oxygen that we do in the clinics can be really helpful. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with hyperbaric oxygen. Getting rid of toxic foods, processed foods. Sugar, especially. Important, especially sugar. Sheep oils and yeah. Right. And so that's blood flow, the B in Bright Mind minds. R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So I'm not a fan of people going into a dark room and do nothing.

It's push your brain, breathe, learn new things. Because now, don't do it to the point where you get headaches and you get dizzy, but push it just to that point. The I is inflammation. You need to decrease the inflammatory response. Again, diet is a big part of that. Diet is a big part. And supplements.

And the supplements, particularly omega-3 fatty acids, curcumin. BrainMD makes brain curcumins. We also have omega-3 power. And probiotics can also be helpful because inflammation comes from leaky gut. Yep. So eliminating the foods that increase inflammation is critical. Again, sugar is one of the big ones. Processed foods, cheap oils.

And foods that turn to sugar. Right. Bread, pasta, potatoes, rice. Gluten-containing foods. And it doesn't mean you have to get rid of them pasta, potatoes, rice, sugar. Gluten-containing foods. And it doesn't mean you have to get rid of them completely, but clearly limit them is smart. The G in Bright Minds is genetics. And do you know, if you have Alzheimer's in your family and you have a head injury, that significantly elevates the risk further.

That makes sense. So I actually argue. Because you're decreasing the blood flow already from the TBI and then now you have a genetic component. And you have the genetic vulnerability. Makes sense. And it's interesting, they actually did a study on boxers. And boxers who had the Alzheimer's gene, it's called the apolipoprotein E4 gene, who had the gene actually showed cognitive impairment after their 11th fight. Where boxers who did not have the gene

did not show cognitive impairment until after their 30th fight. And so if you have dementia, depression, bipolar disorder in your family, you need to do what you can to stay away from traumatic brain injuries or make sure you're really aggressively rehabilitating them. H in bright minds is head trauma. If you have one head trauma,

you're more likely to have another. Why? Because it begins to decrease activity in your cerebellum, which is the major processing part of the brain. It's like my sister. I mean, it's like, my God, 19 car accidents, but she also fell off of a washer, hit her head. I mean, you look at some people and you're like, how? How do you get through the day crossing the street? I don't understand. And plus, she had Erland's. So the depth perception thing was just like, I'm like, no, no.

And she's done better. Much better. She has not had the same problems. For the Erland's. She has toxins. So you want to make sure alcohol is not a health food. But people- After head injuries, people, we've talked about it. They're more anxious, they're more depressed, they have more negative thoughts, they have more financial problems.

So they want to numb it. Which means they're more likely to numb it with smoking or with drinking or with marijuana that everybody thinks is good medicine, which is complete nonsense. And personal products, right? I mean, they're toxins, parabens, phthalates in your makeup, in your shampoo, in your body wash, in your deodorant. So getting rid of the toxins, putting your brain, your body in a healing environment. Mental health issues, dealing with those. And dealing with those doesn't mean taking meds it just means what are the natural ways I can do right with anxiety and depression we talked about here all the time I is immunity and infections make sure your vitamin D level is good some of these are simple oh so simple

just like fix your diet well diet I know is harder for some people but even like just the supplements checking your vitamin D, that's not hard to do. And then N is neurohormones. We talked about that during this week. If you've had a concussion, you need to get those levels checked and then optimize. First, there are natural ways to optimize them that I talk about in memory rescue, but you may need hormone replacement. Yeah, that's interesting. We talked about my mom, how all of her hormones were low, but that's something we saw in the in the hospital of course those were more severe head injuries but really bad like like no hormones or like one hormone would just be wiped out or it was pretty crazy after a head injury you cannot believe the number

of teenage boys i see who have low testosterone levels it It's insane. I know because their hormones are messed up. Right. So yeah. Okay. And then we get to D, which is diabesity. So high blood sugar and being overweight, it's rampant in this country. So getting physically healthy

helps you be cognitively healthy. And probably one of the most important things you can do is get eight hours of sleep at night because sleep often becomes disrupted. It's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, Sounds like a lot of information. I think you laid it out so beautifully in your book, Memory Rescue. Memory Rescue. So if you're struggling with the effects of a concussion or you know someone who is, and there's almost a thousand scientific references in there. What I tell people, just go to the end of each chapter. There's a cool little summary. Right.

There's 10 things to do. Pick one. And if you're struggling with the food, you can go to my website. You can get the Brain Warriors Way cookbook. We make it simple because people are like, well, I don't know what to eat. That's what you eat. You eat what's in the book. You eat what's on what we have on our websites. What we do here at the clinics is exactly what we would tell you to do. So it's what we have on our, you know, we actually provide a lot of those things for you that are either at no or very low cost because we know not everybody can come in. So we hope you've enjoyed Brain Trauma

Awareness Week. There's so many things you can do. I've seen so many brains that have been hurt get better. Yes. That's what we want for you and your loved ones. 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 Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.