Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Feel Better Fast During the Holidays

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

What comes to your mind when you think of the holiday season? Decorations, Santa, presents, and joy? Or do you think about disappointment, insecurity, family grudges, and too much alcohol? In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you a plan to take the proper care of yourself during the most wonderful (and chaotic) time of the year.

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. Welcome back. So we're going to finish our feel better fast and make it last series. I think this one's really important because we're talking about the holidays and people not doing well

during the holidays and I want to actually talk to you about specifically why people don't do well during the holidays and what they can use from this book, the principles you talk about to turn it around and what people that love them can do to help them turn it around because this has been just going on in my own life and my family

and probably many people listening to us. So if you want to have a bad Christmas, buy a lot of alcohol. And sugar. If you want to have a bad Christmas. And now that pot's legal in many states. Toke it up. All right, before we go. So Brilliant by Kelly Davis.

Dr. Kelly Davis. Dr. Daniel Amon is brilliant, is a brilliant medical doctor who is changing lives through his work. His wife, Tana Amon, is brilliantly informative too. I just wanted you to hear that. Even though I'm tagged on, I wanted you to hear that I'm brilliantly informative. Just so you know, FYI. Just kidding. Everyone should hear everything that these two have

to say. Wow, so you're here with my brilliant wife and her husband who his mother called son because I'm bright. So getting sun because I'm bright so so getting serious seasonal affective disorder is real it's serious it begins to happen actually in October and then the stress of November and December and one of the big reasons, besides there's less sun, there's lower vitamin D, there's a higher risk of depression just because of the weather.

It's interesting. I'm listening once again to Lincoln's Melancholy. And in the winter of 1840, 1841, he was suicidal. And one of the things he attributed it to was how awful the weather was. Yes. Especially when people live in states where the weather is particularly bad. So seasonal affective disorder is real.

But it even happens in sunny Southern California because we just went through the time change. Right. So the time change actually is linked. The sun is not out anymore. And it's specifically linked to people starting to get a little wonkier, more tired, a little depressed. But then during the holidays, if you add to that, what happens?

It gets colder, so people start spending more time indoors. We start traveling because we're going to see family. Our stress level goes up dramatically because we have, financially, we're now strapped. We have to buy presents for everybody. I cannot, I hate shopping more than anything on the planet. So now you have to go shopping for all these people. You're stressed out.

But you love online shopping. No, I don't love it. I just have to do it. I have to do it. But it's, so you've got to shop. You have all, financially you're strapped and you're feeling bad because you can't buy what you want to buy from people you love. You have to travel.

It's cold. Traveling alone makes people sick. You've got the time change. You have all of these factors. And now you're going to eat bad and drink a lot of alcohol on top of it. And then add one more factor that people often don't think about. So they're going to spend time with their family. And they're not sleeping as well.

And their family is often stressful for them because they're not taking care of their brain. And family dynamics come up. And when we come to the holidays, you come to Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's, you have this expectation in your head because of social media that everybody's having an awesome time. Yes. And so you begin to compare your family. The Hallmark Channel. Your life with, you might not remember Donna Reed and Father's No Best and those perfect family shows. Right, the Hallmark Channel type. Right.

That because your family is different that you don't live up. That was never more apparent to me than last year. Do you remember when our nieces came? It was the first year they spent with us. And we were all outside, cuddled up on, we're outside because it's California and it was beautiful out. And we were cuddled up on the couch outside and we were hanging out and I had the little fire pit going.

And our niece looked over at us and she goes, I actually had all three nieces, and she looks over and she goes, I've never had a holiday like this. And I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, we've never had a holiday without drama that's this peaceful and there was no alcohol. She's like, it feels weird.

No, so people have these expectations that the holidays are going to be great. But if your family is the type of family where there's a lot of family drama, where there's a lot of chaos and fighting and – So if you want to create a mental illness, go through the holidays where not only is there disappointment, but there's a lack of sleep. There's more free-flowing alcohol. There's stress and disappointment because, you know, I mean, how many times can you buy something that thrills somebody? And it's stress, disappointment, sleep, toxins, a lack of exercise, overdoing things, filled with negative thinking. It's a prescription for disaster.

But having said that, December is the lowest month for suicide. But the highest month Christmas Day for heart attacks. The lowest month for suicide. Number one day for heart attacks. The highest month for suicide. Number one day for heart attacks. The highest month for suicide is April. Right. Because people who've been depressed for months, now the sun is out longer. They get some energy.

They have more energy to complete something that they've thought about for a long time. Yeah. Or it's because they have to pay their taxes. They'd rather check out than pay their taxes. So they're going to show the IRS? A little confused by that, but. So what are the holiday prescriptions from Dr. Tana Amen? What are the holiday prescriptions from the brain doctor's wife?

Well, I can only tell you the nutrition part is that. Now you can, you're a nurse. You're a neurosurgical ICU nurse. They're bossy and they're in charge. We are bossy, aren't we? So take your bossiness, highness, your bossy highness, be in charge and give our brain warrior listeners- Well, I actually did write about this. Direction.

Well, I wrote about this in Brain Warrior's Way. Only from the standpoint of because as a nurse in the hospital, we know. And it's funny. We see so many car accidents because of people drinking. But we see so many people coming in the hospital with heart attacks. And everyone thinks it's just because it's a stressful time of year. And it is a stressful time of year. But it's because people aren't taking care of themselves.

And it's not just December. They start in October, right? And they just start not taking care of themselves all the way through Halloween, all the way through. And then they go, Oh, it's January. Let's get healthy. It's silly. Right? So, so that's the problem is we just see these people and then they add the stress of the holidays on top of it and the travel and the lack of sleep. And the time change is not good for us, right? We know that. So you throw that in on top of it and now all of a sudden you have a recipe for disaster. So, I mean, really what we talk about doing is everything that we've talked about in Brain

Wears Way. It's what you talk about, the tiny habits and feel better fast. It's really what we talk about. You have to follow those daily habits to combat it. So the first thing you need to do is be sleeping and you have to follow those daily habits to combat it. So the first thing you need to do is be sleeping and you need to be grounded. So meditating, praying, grounding yourself. So making appointments to exercise, because so often, especially this happens for women more than men, because women are more selfless. Men are more selfish. Justice of rule, right?

It's about me. And for women, evolutionary-wise, it's about we. It's part of the argument my mom and I got into. Because I will take the time no matter what to exercise, eat healthy, right? And that's rational. That's critical. That's actually selfless. Because what they say on a plane, when the masks come down, put yours on first.

Yep. So that you can then put one on your favorite child. But if you don't take care of yourself, there's no way you can take care of others. And if you have daughters, what you're doing is you're modeling taking care of everybody else and not yourself. And you actually, I think, do a good job of modeling for Chloe. It's, I need this time because that's what makes me be an effective human being. When family members call that selfish, I would argue it's actually much more selfish to do the other thing. Much more selfish. Because then you end up prickly.

No, not just prickly. You end up sick and your family members have to take care of you. And you're not there for them when they need you. You can't show up and be your best when people need you. That's selfish. So, yes, that's me preaching. Back to the prescription. P's selfish. So yes, that's me preaching. Back to the prescription. Positivity, happiness. Yeah, this was a little personal in case you didn't notice.

Let's get back to prescriptions from the brain doctor's wife for the holidays. So yeah, finding a way to ground yourself is really important. So for me, the prayer and meditation, I'm not a person who can do one thing. I have to do it all. So prayer, meditation, exercise, but eating really bad during the holidays to me just seems psychotic. It just doesn't even make sense. Now we're not saying we know you're going to maybe have something, but have a plan. And we actually write about a plan in the cookbook, in the Brain Wears White cookbook. There's a plan for the holidays. Have a three bite rule. If you're going to go have something, you don't need to go pig out. There's a plan to have healthy recipes for the holidays, healthy stuffing, healthy turkey, healthy desserts

for the holidays. And if you're going to have something that someone else made, do the three bite rule. Don't go hog wild crazy for three months. That's just dumb. It just doesn't make sense. It's not the sign of love. Yes. So what are some of your favorite desserts? So I have, actually I have all kinds of, if you like pumpkin, there's all kinds of pumpkin based stuff. There's pumpkin spice lattes, there's pumpkin muffins, there's pumpkin everything. There's brownies, there's chocolate. Your brownies are so good. Yeah, the brownies are great. There's chocolate muffins. There's apple cobbler, right?

There's cherry cobbler. So there's all kinds of stuff. But there's no sugar added. They have a little natural sugar from the fruit. It's really good. Right. In fact, you should make me some of that. So have a plan.

My suggestion would be to have a plan to be healthy. Warriors, do not start training on fight day because you can't start training on fight day and expect to win. You have to be trained, prepared, ready to go so that on fight day you win. And notice how you feel when you do the right thing and how you feel when you don't do the right thing. We want you to love yourself. Be prepared. Getting well. I mean, the holidays are really a celebration of love. Not a time to kill yourself and like be a glutton. I don't understand that. Yes, I'm preaching again. Sorry. I'm not sorry. I take

it back. I'm not sorry. Pastor Tana Amen. I'm just not sorry. Take care of yourselves. Happy holidays. Your loved ones are depending on you to be healthy. Take care of yourselves. Love yourself and love other people by taking care of yourself. Because we love you. Happy holidays. 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.