Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Assess Your Brain to Determine Problem Areas

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

In the final episode of week 2 of The Brain Health Revolution 6-Week Challenge, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you more of the major risk factors for cognitive decline, as well as how to assess your brain to see which risk factors are the most important for you to address. By doing so, you’ll be putting your brain in a healing environment so you can feel better.

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. The G in Bright Minds is for genetics, but people get this wrong. Genetic risk is not a death sentence. It's a wake-up call to be healthy. Meet my friend, Lisa Gibbons. Many of you know her. She had a mother and grandmother with Alzheimer's disease. And I wanted her to come see me. She and I became friends. I was on her show 20 years ago, just about 20 years ago. And she had me on over and over again. And I'm like, you need to come get scanned with that

family history. And about 11 years ago, she was going through a divorce and she felt bad and we scanned her and her brain looked terrible. Overall, very low blood flow to her brain, especially some of the areas thought to be involved in Alzheimer's. And SPECT can tell years before people have any symptoms if they're likely to get dementia. And this is what her brain looked like 10 years later. It was dramatically improved. And I'm so proud of her. You are not stuck with the brain

you have. You can make it better. But how would she ever know unless we actually looked? So how do you decrease your genetic risk? These are factors that have research behind vitamin D. All of you should know your vitamin D levels. One of your important numbers we gave you and optimize it. I mean, I take 7,000 units of vitamin D a day just to keep it healthy. Blueberries, make them organic, but they're loaded with nutrients to help your brain.

And then the herb sage, the supplement curcumins, green tea. We want people to test their brains regularly on our website, Brain Fit Life. You can actually take a 35-minute sophisticated neuropsych assessment that will tell you the health of your brain. You need to do it on a laptop. You shouldn't do it on your phone. But if you have 40 minutes, sign up for BrainFit Life. Take what's called WebNeuro, and it'll give you a sense. How's your mood? How's your anxiety? But how's your processing speed? How is your long-term memory? How's your short-term memory? How's your attention and so on? Really important. But the most important strategy is to be serious. Whatever genetic vulnerability, like you have diabetes in your family.

Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia. Right. So being serious about your health, which I know you are, is really important. The H, and we talked a little bit about this, is head trauma. It's an epidemic in this country and it's just heartbreaking that people don't get it. So I may get to be on one of the new shows during the Super Bowl talking about rehabilitating brain trauma. If you're going to play, you need to be serious about rehabilitation immediately. So we did the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players. We have more than 300 players. We have seen high levels of damage. So the blue areas equal where the damage was in their brain compared

to healthy. And you can just sort of see it's everywhere. But 80% of our players show improvement when we put them on our Bright Minds rehabilitation Program. How exciting is that? 80% show improvement, especially in mood, memory, sleep, motivation. And here's one of our players, you know, Anthony. He's so great. Anthony Davis, the Hall of Fame running back from USC, who's called the Notre Dame killer. He came to see us in 2007, and his brain looked really damaged. And he was having problems with his memory, with his temper. He was getting confused. In fact, what triggered him to come see me is he was on the 405, and he forgot where he was going and had to pull over to the side. And he

called one of his friends in the department of pharmacy at USC who said, you need to go see Dr. Amen. And I, of course, I remember who he was because I grew up in Southern California. I, you know, have just loved him for the last 13 years. But we have to have a scan 10 years, 10 years later. Do you want a better brain a month from now we have a scan 10 years later. Do you want a better brain a month from now? Well, about 10 years from now. You do the things we ask you to do. His mood is better.

His work is better. His energy is better. He was so much fun to have on the podcast. He had a really rough life growing up. It was just really interesting. Yeah. No, we adore him. Patrick Caffrey, who's captain in the Marine Corps, sustained three blast injuries in Afghanistan. Headaches, insomnia, anger outbursts.

His scan showed both traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. In the red, white, and blue scan, you can actually see the diamond pattern in his brain. And that's what we see with PTSD. And I loved what he said. He said four years later, the more the time goes by, the better I am. Isn't that what you want? The SPECT scan started an irreversible domino of exponential personal growth. The scan was the only reason I admitted I had both TBI and PTSD, wouldn't have admitted

it if I didn't see it. Ultimately, the scan was my gateway tool to a set of brain-healthy strategies that I still use to have a better brain and a better life. So did Patrick have a mental illness? I would argue no. He had brain health challenges that when we optimized his brain, his life was better. But we just throw these guys away. We cannot do that anymore. It's just not conscionable. So if I was an evil ruler

and I wanted to increase your head trauma risks, I'd encourage distracted driving. Put your phones away. I'd invent evil ruler games like running with the bulls. Do you have any idea

why people run with the bulls? It's a tradition, but I don't know why. It sounds not like a good tradition. Well, but they are trying to, they don't like it either. They're trying to outlaw it. And I would require older people to get up on ladders to clean out. You have no idea how many head injuries I took care of in the hospital from people falling off of ladders and roofs.

Like, like so many. There was always someone in the hospital in a coma, head injury, bleeds. So in the seven minutes we have left, I mean, we could go on toxins for days and days, and we actually have podcasts. We'd love for you to look and listen to our Brain Warriors Way podcast. Tan and I release four a week generally, and we've done 600 podcasts, have 7 million downloads. But alcohol is not a health food. You've heard me say it. Marijuana is not going green. Cocaine is bad for your brain.

But what we've learned is there's many other things that are toxic. So I'm not a fan of marijuana. We've talked about that over and over again. You and the mouse in your pocket? Yes. I go, of course it should be legal. Why are you going to put potheads in jail? And Tana goes, who's we?

No, no, no. He said, of course we think it should be legal. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, who's we no no he said of course we think it should be legal yeah yeah i'm like who's we do you have a mouse in your pocket yes that's the mouse in the pocket thing um there are other things that are toxic for brain function uh mold exposure carbon monoxide, firefighters, pesticides, toxic chemicals. 95% of baby foods contain lead. It's just insane. That's insane.

Things like heavy metals, anesthesia. Okay, anesthesia. Well, that's what we're dealing with with you. Well, this is my assistant. And I started to wonder because like many people, I've had multiple surgeries, 10 medical surgeries. And is there a stacking effect? Like you have a threshold and past a certain number, it just begins to- Well, it can do it for one.

This is my assistant. But does it start to affect you more after a certain number? She has a big, fat, healthy brain when she first came to work with me. And then she had an aortic aneurysm. Yeah, but I mean, heart surgery is the worst by far. Heart surgery is the worst. So for people listening, if you've got heart surgery. And I could tell because she was moodier, she was sadder.

Yeah. And she wasn't following through. My uncle's doing the same thing. And so I could say, oh, well, you know, she's bad. But we've. We know too much. We know that there's a reason why people act the way they do. Yeah.

My uncle had open heart surgery. It was about a year and a half ago now. And I told him, I called him ahead of time and told him, look, they're not going to tell you this. And I told him, like, if you start struggling with your mood, your memory, like your energy, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, okay, honey. Sort know okay honey and then all of a sudden now he's forgetting everything he's depressed and so he called me and we're trying to now work on it but it's heart surgery is terrible yeah i love the comments 95 of baby food contains lymph yeah wow it's insane um let's just start them off but when we worked on rehabilitating her brain, it's better over time.

That's amazing. So how do you know if there's toxic risk? Do you have a history of water damage in your home or work because of the mold, foreign travel? Oh, now foreign travel is just like. So that's why you keep trying to get me to go out of the country. I'm not going to China. I'm not going to China. I'm not going to bother you about that. We see it on scans, on spec scans, toxic hair metal analyses, mycotoxin, testing for mold.

And we often refer, we have five, soon to be six, integrative functional medicine doctors that work at Amen Clinics. So how do you decrease toxicity? You avoid it. We like this app called Think Dirty. You can scan all of your personal products. They'll tell you on a scale of one to 10 how quickly they're killing you. And they also give you suggestions for alternatives. Right. And you found a couple of brands. Oh, I love some of the makeup and the body products and house products. Yeah. Yeah. And then support the four organs of detoxification.

Drink more water to flush things through your kidneys. Eat more fiber to flush things through your gut. Saunas or sweating with exercise. Kill the alcohol to help your liver. And eat brassicas, detoxifying vegetables that can help your liver like cauliflower cabbage broccoli brussels sprouts so these are the first group of bright minds bright blood flow retirement and aging inflammation genetics head toxins. We have more coming up. So tasks for this week.

We have a poster for you that basically summarizes all the things Tan and I just talked about. You can download it. And what I want you to do is circle your risk factors and what things you're going to commit to, to get rid of them. What, you know, people go, well, what's the list of things to do and not to do? This is the list. Right. Going through bright minds is the list. Two, we want you to listen to one of our Brain Warriors Way podcasts. We put a number of links to some of our highest rated ones, but you can also go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and pick among the 600 of them that are there. And there's a number of them on nutrition or, you know, head injuries or whatever. We have a digital addiction we just did recently.

So good. We've done a number on forgiveness. Three, I want you to take a day and then I want you to do this for the rest of your life where you need to hydrate. Drink half your weight in ounces a day. Now this is if you're under 200 pounds. If you're over 200 pounds,

make sure you're drinking 80 to 100 ounces of water. You have to replace your electrolytes. New learning on day four. We downloaded, I created for you a new learning by brain region list. If you want to optimize your frontal lobes, judgment, forethought, impulse control, or your temporal lobes. We just want you to pick one thing and tell us you did it. Five, from day five until forever. I mean, for 15 years now, I've been taking two omega-3 power, high quality fish oil every day to decrease inflammation and support the health of your brain. Day six, fill out, have I had a head injury questionnaire? A lot of people go, no, like you.

You said, no, what I had, did you ever have a head injury? No. I was never in a coma. I was never on an incinerator. Yeah, I flipped a car at 75 miles an hour and landed on the top of the vehicle. Yeah. at 75 miles an hour and landed on the top of the vehicle. And day seven, we have a toxic questionnaire for you. And we get no money from Think Dirty.

We just think it's cool. But we want you actually to scan your personal products. I went through my bathroom when I first discovered this. Oh, my God. And threw out half of it. And the worst part was the stuff that was advertised as natural, that was advertised as phytonutrient-based, were my worst products. That was horrifying. The ones I spent the most money on. So just, I know we're out of time.

A couple of questions. I've been told that mixing fruits together is bad for you i was going to address this only because no you can join in with me but i wanted to address that one that mixing fruits and vegetables or this idea of food combining because i used to actually do that i always thought that just sounded logical but sounding logical and being logical or being having science behind it are two different things because the truth is, is when I really dug into it, there wasn't really science behind it. Um, because foods are the way that certain foods are digested or different in your body. Um, and so if you think about it, um, like fats and carbs and proteins are digested in different ways in your body and the enzymes are released in different places.

And so there was never, I could never find the science behind this, the studies that actually backed it up. So did you, have you ever found that? No. So, and you know, if- Yeah, I think the more you worry about it, the, yeah, I don't think I would worry about it. Right, and for thousands of years, there's never been a way for people to have known that. So one other one, and then we will end. I'm taking this challenge not for myself, but for my family member that has brain health issues. How can I influence them to get a proper assessment? You know what I often say is, one, you have to

live the message. If you live the message and you're authentic. You're doing the right thing. That will help. And then nudge them, invite them to take the course with you. And if they won't, send them perhaps my TED Talk, the most important lesson from 83,000 scans. Or change your brain, change your life. So in just 15 minutes, they can get a taste of, if I have a better brain, I can have a better life. And if I don't look at my brain, well, how the heck would I ever know where I'm at?

So we are grateful for all of you, for all the comments. Yeah, lots of people. It was really great. Actually, there's a question about alkaline water. Generally not a fan of it. Not a fan of drinking it. I'm not a fan of the expensive systems where you drink, that's all you drink all day. So if you have a little bit of alkaline water after a heavy workout, something, you know, particularly stressful, that's fine.

But drinking it all day starts to become the equivalent of taking antacids all the time because you need stomach acid. You need stomach acid. So neutralizing that is generally not a good idea. We will be back with you next week. Invite your friends. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks.

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