Change Your Brain Every Day - How Does Food Affect Your Mood? Pt. 1 with Zoe Davis

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

When you start to think about food as medicine that can heal you, rather than just stuff you eat when you’re hungry, everything can change. In the first episode in a series with BrainFitLife coach Zoe Davis, Dr. Daniel Amen and Zoe discuss the standard American diet (SAD), the food/mood connection, and how elimination diets can tell you if some of the biggest health offender foods are hurting you.

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. So welcome back, everybody. This week, we're going to talk with our brain fit life coach, Zoe Davis, who's just amazing. And she has a master's degree from Antioch university in Seattle has worked with people who have eating disorders, but what's really more important to us is she's our coach for Amen Clinics, especially on our online

program Brain Fit Life. And I get to watch all the questions people ask on Brain Fit Life, and I just love how she answers them. So anybody knows the Amen Clinics Method really well. It is Zoe. And Zoe and I did a very fun project with Satori Capital in Dallas, Texas, where the whole company embraced brain health for a year. And as part of it, I lectured to them and all of them had individual appointments with Zoe and they actually found that to be incredibly valuable to them. And so this week's podcast, we're going to talk about food and mood, food in your mind. We're going to talk about gut health and it's like,

you know, why does psychiatric clinics care about gut health? Because it's completely connected to your brain. And then we're going to get super practical on what should you eat every day. So welcome. Such a joy to be with you, Zoe. Thank you. It's great to be here. So let's start by talking about, what's your favorite story in working at Amen Clinics? You actually work in our Walnut Creek Clinic in Northern California, but you have a lot of great contact with our folks online. Yeah, gosh, there's so many good stories. I love working with folks who are really at the

end of the rope in terms of feeling frustrated by lack of help or lack of feeling better. And the model that we offer, you know, the biopsychosocial spiritual model really embraces someone's whole self, right? So when we start talking to patients about how we can help them differently, it renews hope. It renews a sense that there's something they can do, and there is. There's a lot. And so lots of stories. I can think of one off the top of my head of a woman who was really struggling with depression and anxiety. She had been for much of her life and had been through every diet program you can go through because she struggled with weight as well. And, you know, we started talking about nourishment on a really broad scale. How can she

feed her brain well so that her mood is better? How can she feed her body so her weight, you know, moderates? And she really started to change her relationship with food. She started to change her relationship with herself and really started addressing, you know, the poor nutrition through her food, but also through relationships that weren't serving her. And she really started to transform. And so her body, her weight started to come to a normal point. She started to feel less depressed. She started to feel more motivated. And those kind of stories, again, where we're always going back to the whole person and really treating the whole person and seeing the whole person, I think has so much value, whether we're specifically in a nutrition visit or a coaching visit. You know, that's the mindset that we have and it really

serves the whole person. So i love those kind of stories where all of the pieces come together and someone begins to be able to transform because they're not just you know in a diet group or they're not just in a you know getting a psychiatric medication for depression but they're looking at their whole life and we can really hold that space and help them to do, to do transformative work. So. I love that story. It's why we do what we do, right? It's the stories that keep us motivated every day. Absolutely. One of my favorite stories, you know,

thinking about food and your mind is we saw a guy named Jeff who had been depressed for 30 years and even had ECT and three suicide attempts. And no one had ever talked to him about his diet. It's like nuts. But there's a brand new study out that I read on BBC that said medical doctors get virtually no training on nutrition, which, you know, it seems like the pharmaceutical companies have hijacked medicine and you get a lot of pharmacology, but the best pharmacology is actually F-A-R-M pharmacology from, you know, it's healthy food. So Jeff came to see us. And one of the things I often do is put people on an elimination diet. It's like, let's just get rid of things that are controversial that might hurt you. So gluten, dairy, corn, soy, sugars, and artificial dyes and preservatives and a lot of people get

freaked out it's like oh there's nothing to eat and i'm like no there's 10 000 things to eat you know god gave you a big brain for a reason stop acting like you're four um yeah and within three days he's better and it's amazing three days he's better three days yeah he's better. And it's amazing. Three days, he's better. Three days, yeah. And so we started to add things back one at a time and added back gluten. Not one thing happened. He's still better. Added back dairy.

Not one thing happened. He's better. Added back corn. He said within 20 minutes, he had the image of a gun in his mouth, wanting to shoot himself. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I've had a similar experience with someone with Korn as a trigger in the elimination diet. I mean, it's fascinating. I think, you know, when you're motivated, you know, because your symptoms are so bad or so impactful to your life, which is a lot of what we see in the clinic. You know, people are motivated to do what it takes and emphasizing what you want to be eating, as opposed to only what you want to, you know, get rid of can really help people to feel like there

is a wide variety because whole foods, there's tons of them, right? There's tons of different kinds of vegetables, low sugar fruits, healthy fats, high quality proteins. I mean, these are, you know, for the most part, we've got access to that. And so emphasizing, you know, what you can really be eating in a day to use food as medicine is a really different, you know, frame of thinking for a lot of people,

because we think of standard American diet, right? It's all about taste and convenience and what's quick. And it's not thinking about how is this food actually going to nourish me? How am I going to be fueled by this? How am I going to either prevent symptoms or disease? Or how am I going to heal from things that are going on currently? And that's a real different way of thinking about it. And for a lot of people, just having that language of saying, let's talk about how we can use food as medicine, which is how I like to talk to speak about it. It changes it for people because it's not, you know,

it's not the way that we normally think about food. We just don't. And like you, to your point, exactly. In medical school, you're not necessarily taught how to tell people what to eat, even if you're a GI specialist, right? It's not happening. And when you think of the standard American diet, so I always love the acronym for that, SAD. It's associated with so many mental health problems from depression, dementia, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder. And one of the things that got me really interested in diet is, you know, I think one of my big gifts

is I listen to my patients and when they get better, I at least think about it rather than dismiss it. And so one of my patients told me her arthritis went away when I got, when she got rid of NutraSweet or aspartame. And at 35, I was 35 at the time, I had arthritis. My knees hurt, my hands hurt. And I'm like, oh, well, I'm getting old. And now that I'm 63, I'm like, well, that's sort of silly. And so I was drinking Diet Coke like it was my best friend. You know, at lunch I'd go through Jack in the Box, get a 32-ounce Diet Coke.

It's horrifying now that I think about it. And so I stopped it and my arthritis went away. And I'm like, oh my God. And then I'm like, no. So I would like test it. And within 20 minutes, my hands would start to hurt. And so I'm like, I. So I would like test it. And within 20 minutes, my hands would start to hurt. And so I'm like, I'm paying attention to this. And then one of my autistic kids,

his mom heard about an elimination diet. And when she got rid of gluten and dairy, he picked up a hundred new words in a month. And so I'm like, you know, maybe I should pay attention to this. Absolutely. It can be that powerful. It really can. And you think about, you know, not only what are you taking away, but when you're replacing that with nutrient dense foods, you're, you're getting all these nutrients that you probably weren't getting before in the standard American diet, right? I mean, we're, we're notoriously low in some key vitamins, right? Vitamin E, vitamin D, vitamin C, you know,

we're not magnesium, we're not getting these in the standard American diet. So it's, yes, you're removing these toxins virtually, you know, essentially. And then you're also replacing them with these nutrient-dense foods. So, you know, the nutrients, as Dr. Kidd, you know, one of our peers talks about, you know, these are not optional, right? These are nutrients that our brain requires for functioning, right? Our body requires. And so, you know, we're resilient. We're able to get by for so long, but eventually things start to break down when we're not getting what we need in our daily lives through food.

And it can be so powerful when you start to make those changes. I've had a lot of aspartame stories. So you just reminded me of that. A lot of patients there, I'm like, let's get you off of that. Let's stop this. And it's in everything. And now chewing gum, for example, they don't put the ingredients on the label. And how they get away with that. I'm not quite sure, but it's virtually in everything

that is processed. So reading the label is critical. And if, and I would just say, if it's not on the label, don't, if they don't put the ingredients on the label, don't buy it. Right. Because that's a sign that there's some trouble waiting. Absolutely. Something, something's hidden. Yeah. And getting, you know, getting people used to reading ingredients is just a really great way to engage people with what they're putting into their bodies. Cause it's, again, it's not something that a lot of people think about certainly certainly a lot of people do but we're slowly getting there to where people are starting to think oh

does this matter if I you know take this in and is this impacting me over time and you know the other thing I think about is how as we get older you know hopefully getting older that we're accumulating all of these, these things that we've eaten or not eaten throughout our lives so that it makes sense that, you know, there's going to be issues like dementia or cognitive decline or, you know, mood issues because we haven't been doing it. So it's, it's accumulated over time. Our body has been able to compensate for a period, maybe, maybe not. And then eventually we've got to do something about it. So. So if somebody is struggling with dementia,

you know, I think it's an emergency because the longer that goes on, the less hope there is. If someone's struggling with attentional problems, brain fog, pain, depression, what are some of the things you think they should start eliminating from their diet? So the big three that we talk about immediately are gluten, sugar, and dairy. So because they're just known to be the most sort of obvious ones that people can have some benefit from removing. And that's hard to do for some people. Some people really resist doing it. But

when there's something, like you said, urgent that's going on, there's a great motivation to do that. So we talk about how to do that. How do we, how do we take those out and what do we eat instead? And we really emphasize, again, what do we want to be eating? What are we trying to eat more of? Yes, we're removing these things, but we're not taking away the variety because there's a lot of variety. So often people notice more immediate benefit from those three things. You can also, as you mentioned earlier, corn and soy are another two that people tend to have a response to. But once you remove the sugar and the gluten and the dairy, you've eliminated so many processed foods, right? Because they're in so many packaged foods.

They're in so many products. And so when we just talk about trying to eat whole foods and emphasize whole foods, we're already eliminating dyes and artificial flavorings and artificial sweeteners, all these things that you just don't have to think about if there's not a label on it and you're just eating whole food, then you've eliminated a lot of those other ones that we really have to get to at some point. So I always talk to people about how do we start just eating only foods that are in their original form as much as possible, right?

So vegetables throughout the day, how do we just have those as much as we can? Most people have, I think the average American has like two cups a day and maybe the vegetables, white potato or corn or something, right? But we want to be getting more like six to nine cups a day. So we can do that. We just have to eat it more regularly throughout the day. And that alone is going to benefit us hugely, right? If we're replacing that gluten, that wheat, that white flour product with more vegetables, well, we've upped our nutrient density immensely and we're getting more fiber.

You know, we're getting more vitamins and minerals. So we're we're eliminating something, but we're really emphasizing the variety that we're replacing it with. So I have a fun story. Fun might not be the right word. This guy came from Michigan, no, Minnesota, to get scanned. And the scan was not very healthy. And he said, I want you to do one more scan on MSG. And I'd never heard of it as a problem at that time. I think it's about 15 years ago.

And I'm like, why? He said, whenever I get MSG, I get violent. And I've actually hurt my wife. And I just want to know what it does to my brain. And so we gave him a big slug of MSG and scanned him again and it deactivated his left temporal lobe. It was so clear, which is an area of the brain that's involved in violence. Right, yeah. And it was funny, my interaction with him, I said, well, you have two choices.

And it was sort of tongue in cheek for me. I said, you can stop the MSG or I can put you on Neurontin, an anti-convulsant, and I can protect your temporal lobe. And I'm fully expecting him to say, okay, it's a problem. I just won't eat it. He said, you have to give me the medicine. And I'm like, wow. And he said, food companies often don't have to label that MSG is there, or they'll call it natural flavoring. And if go out to dinner and i get msg if i lose my temper one more time my wife said she is divorcing me and if she divorces me i'll kill myself

so i'm like let me give you the medicine so we put them on the medicine and told them to hold the MSG. But if they don't have it at a certain level in food, they don't have to put it in the ingredients. And that's why eating whole foods, as you mentioned, is so important when it comes to your mental health. And who would think that a food additive could actually cause a marital problem, which then leads to suicide? Yeah. Isn't that crazy? It's pretty amazing. I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean, this is the chemistry of how we imbibe things and take food in and then what happens,

what happens to us. And the opposite can be true, right? I mean, saffron, like the spice of good feeling, right? Where you can eat it and feel, you know, this happiness overwhelm you. And there's research to back that up. It's actually an antidepressant, right? So it's like food is medicine, right? It's that powerful.

And, you know, as I think you always say, it's medicine or poison, right? It's like it can go either way. So getting people to even think about that and even make that connection can be really powerful. You know, I like talking with kids about that, too. You know, it's like start making those connections when you eat something. How does that make you feel? And you start that young and you get that that language kind of going in the internal mind. You know, it really helps to steer you towards certain foods or away from other foods that, you know,

aren't going to make you feel good. So important. And you know, that's why we call this podcast the Brain Warriors Way, because you're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat. We say the real weapons of mass destruction are highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber, food-like substances stored in plastic containers that are destroying the health of America. We can do so much better. So stay with us. When we come back, we're going to talk about the gut-brain connection. Who knew that I should have been paying attention more to the gut lectures when

I decided I was going to be a psychiatrist? Who knew? 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.