Change Your Brain Every Day - How To Heal from a Head Injury / TBI

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

In the fourth and final episode in a series about hidden brain injuries, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you a step-by-step process to counter the negative effects that come with suffering a brain injury. Armed with Dr. Amen’s simple pneumonic, you’ll have all the tools you need to avoid suffering and start feeling (and behaving) 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. Welcome back. We are on day four of Traumatic Brain Injury Week, and we're going to talk about interventions today. So this is a really good one. If you've

had a traumatic brain injury, you're going to want to listen to this. Do you want to read a review before we do that? Marshall Maxwell. Dr. Amen, thank you for your knowledge and sharing with the general world. It was interesting listening to your interview with Tom Bilyeu. I had a question for you about cannabis use, and I know you mentioned it ages the brain prematurely. Is it due to overstimulation of the cerebellum or frontal lobe intuitively if the neurons are firing at a faster rate then more wear and tear you know that's actually really interesting i think over time it decreases blood flow to the brain and that's why it is toxic and it's not just smoking uh what we actually found it was more toxic to the brain than people who smoke cigarettes uh so we also showed

decreased activity in the hippocampus the brain's major mood and memory center. Interesting. And that was with cannabis without the THC? No. Cannabis has THC in it. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm thinking of CBD oil. Right. CBD generally- You can tell I'm not a marijuana fan.

Generally no THC, but sometimes it does. And we've unleashed CBD onto the general population. People are giving it to their dogs. There's been virtually no study. So I know the NFL is toyed with the idea of using marijuana as a treatment for traumatic brain injury. Let's decrease the activity even more. So let's talk about healing. If you've had a traumatic brain injury in your life, what are the things? So brain envy, we talked about it. Avoid anything that hurts it. And if we think of our bright minds, risk factors, all of those are there.

So in the last episode, you talked about sugar. But it's really about eating a diet that supports brain health. And that's what we really did in Brain Warriors Way and Bright Minds. It's the same diet. In fact, that's the cookbook you promote in Bright Minds is the Brain Warriors Way cookbook. It really lays it out very clearly and easily and gives you a path. How do you do this? Because people are like, okay, but it's hard to eat without putting sugar in your diet. It's hard to eat without a high grain diet that it quickly turns to sugar. It's actually not. Okay. So I've got hundreds of recipes that help you achieve that in a simple way, but that's critical to putting your brain

in a healing state. If you think of nutrition, it's like the number one thing in your life, you eat all the time, right? So you eat all day long. So you want to be eating things that are going to support healing. And that's one of the things you can do. And then we have supplements and things like that as well. So here at Amen Clinics, we did the big NFL study. At a time when the NFL was sort of in denial, that they had a huge problem with traumatic brain injury. And we've scanned and treated about 300 players.

Now 80% of them get better. When we do this, a multiple vitamin with higher doses of B vitamins, multiple vitamin, high dose fish oil. We use 5.6 grams of fish oil with about 2,800 milligrams of EPA and DHA. And then we used a brain boost that worked in multiple ways. So ginkgo and venpocetine to boost blood flow, phosphatidylserine to help with memory, huperzine A to help with acetylcholine.

So we're really using supplements in a sophisticated way to nourish their brain. And that was super helpful. The other thing was hyperbaric oxygen. And how did I learn about hyperbaric oxygen. And how did I learn about hyperbaric oxygen? My friend Mike Huesler from UCLA, who also does spec scans, showed before and after scans in people with hyperbaric oxygen showing improved blood flow. I actually published a study with Paul Hart from New Orleans on soldiers. And we showed not only did it increase blood flow, it decreased, it improved concentration.

It improved their memory. It decreased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. So two things. Number one, to your supplement regimen, which I know that's what the study was done on. I just can't help it. The nutrition person in me is just like dying to jump in. You need to have your vitamin D checked because if you're feeling depressed or anxious, you need to be optimizing your vitamin D as well.

And I always recommend probiotics. Well, so let's just quickly go through the Bright Minds risks and interventions because that's what you do with traumatic brain injury. So B in Bright Mind Mind stands for blood flow. What we often see on scans is low blood flow. So things like beets and rosemary can increase blood flow to the brain. Gencoviposatine as far as supplements and hyperbaric oxygen. Right. Anything that decreases blood flow makes your traumatic brain injury worse.

So the hyperbaric oxygen, I just have to, this is actually kind of funny. So apparently it works so well. I want to actually use it more. But apparently it works so well. A couple of our like celebrity patients who, you know, decided that it's easier for them to get one put in their home. Didn't I hear that they were asking if they could sleep in it? Yeah.

Because they felt so much better, right? So it was like, oh, can I sleep in this thing? I'm like, can you do that? It's not recommended. But that's how much better they are. But you can spend up to four hours a day in a hyperbaric chamber. And the first thing that our football players said is their sleep got better. Cause sleep is often.

Well, and that was the point was they not only slept. These people I'm talking about slept better. There were two of them I can think of slept better, but they just, they felt so much better during the day when they did that. So yeah, I just, I was like, Oh, it must make a big difference. The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And it used to be that people said, oh, people with traumatic brain injury should not do anything,

should basically go in a dark room for a month and not do anything. And no, you should be using your brain, just not to the point where you trigger symptoms. The I is inflammation. And 97% of people are low in omega-3 fatty acids. Often they have a high C-reactive protein. So the big intervention is fish oil. Get your gut right. So you had mentioned probiotics and also curcumin. So probiotics for your brain.

Who knew? Now that's the big thing on the horizon. That's like what everyone's talking about. We talk about that all the time, about your gut brain health. And the G is genetic. So if you have a risk for Alzheimer's disease, you actually, traumatic brain injury generally is much worse for you. It can actually accelerate your risk.

And people know about President Reagan. And some people say he had it in the White House. I'm actually friends with somebody that was in his White House. He said he absolutely didn't have it in his White House. But right after he left the presidency, he fell from a horse and had a subdural hematoma. And then it really accelerated a process that may had been brewing. So genes are not a death sentence. They should be a wake up call for you to get healthy.

Yeah. Age obviously is head trauma. Don't get another one. Right. So do not ski without a helmet. I mean, do stupid things. And it's often on the ski slopes where it's not you. It's someone else. It's the other people that make it risk-free. But it's not just sports. I mean, people don't really think about this, but as a nurse, I can't help it.

I'm out. I was a trauma nurse. And whenever I'm out, I'm like, I just see head injuries happening everywhere, like, before they happen. I can't help it. But people just aren't paying attention to certain things because it's not in their daily routine. It's something I was sort of trained for. I mean, the big thing that we watch for that we're so scared of

is, you know, older people falling. So you've got to make sure that your pathways are clear, that you don't have steps, that, you know, you have got nightlights, that there are just so many little things like that because once you've had a brain injury, once you've had a fall, you're more likely to fall. Because it hurts your cerebellum. So you're not quite as coordinated. Protect your head. T is toxins and we're loaded with toxins with legalizing marijuana everywhere. People think alcohol is a health food. I'd kill the pot, kill the alcohol. Scan all of your personal products so you're not putting parabens and phthalates on your body.

They're hormone disruptors, and we'll get to hormones in just a minute, but they're often low in people who've had traumatic brain injury. Almost all of my NFL players have low testosterone. Imagine that, right? These massive sex symbols, really, but many of them complain of seriously low libido. Interesting. The M is mind storms. So it used to be mental health, but in my new book, The End of Mental Illness, it's about mental illness. So I changed M to mind storms. So it's really abnormal electrical activity, often secondary to a traumatic brain injury where it damages your temporal lobes there, the ketogenic diet actually can be really helpful.

Um, you don't want to let your blood sugars get too low because that can trigger off one of the mind storms. In severe cases, don't you sometimes use, um, like an, like an anti-seizure medication? All the time. Yeah. All the time. I'm a huge fan of Lamictal and Neurontin and Trileptal for my patients who have mood instability,

irritability, anxiety, temper problems. So they're treating people badly in their lives or... And they often, people who had a traumatic brain injury often get misdiagnosed as having bipolar disorder when they really don't have the traditional highs and lows. They're just sort of irritable all the time or anxious all the time. That's often secondary to a traumatic brain injury. That's so interesting. The I is immunity and infections. So cleaning up your diet, often going on an elimination diet can help.

And if you're not getting better, getting screen for herpes and Lyme. So what about someone who's had, so I had mono when I was little, when I was young, very young, but ever since then, apparently that stays in your system. So you'll have markers for Epstein-Barr virus. And it just, it sort of wore out your immune system. So I was, because I've always wondered between that and all the other stuff I've had in the cancer. But I've always wondered, why do I get sick when no one else? Like if I'm around anybody sick, I get sick.

And so you want to keep your vitamin D level at a high. And I do better now. And for immunity, you want to cook with mushrooms and onions and you use a lot of garlic, which I'm grateful for. Lots of onions and garlic. I use lots of herbs and spices. The N is neurohormone deficiencies. Often multiple hormones are low and people had traumatic brain injury. So getting them tested and optimized, killing the sugar, lifting weights can be helpful. So do you remember when my mom had her fall, it literally shut down all of her hormones.

Now, I remember that happening in the hospital sometimes, but those were like we talked about severe brain injuries. My mom's was pretty severe, even though she was never hospitalized. Really severe. She had a subdural hematoma. But she was never hospitalized. So that's a common thing though, right? It can shut down all of your hormones.

It's very common. And some people don't know it and they wonder why they feel so terrible. Yeah, I know my friend Mark Gordon and I were in a new movie called Quiet Explosions about how replacing your hormones can make a huge positive difference in your life. D is diabesity.

It's just rampant. So as Tannis keeps saying, get your diet right. S is sleep. When's just rampant. So Tana keeps saying, get your diet right. S is sleep. When you get your sleep right, things just get so much better. So my book, Memory Rescue, goes through all of these in great detail. Tana's cookbook, The Brain Warrior's Way. So one thing I want to say about sleep is that when you do, this is one of the main things I hear with teaching the nutrition classes is that as you do all the other things, the sleep

gets better. So it will, and as your sleep gets better, then you, you have more resistance and you start to do better in other things, but it's like this circle. But as your diet gets better, as all these other things get better, your sleep gets better. And there's specific things you can do. Melatonin, magnesium. We have a great podcast. Hypnosis. We have a sleep specialist. One of our doctors is a sleep specialist. Oh, Dr. Criato. He's amazing. We actually have a brand new sleep course coming. So stay tuned for that. We hope this has been helpful. Such a common issue, but you're not stuck with the brain you have. There's hope. Even if you've been bad to it, you can make it better.

We can prove it. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast.

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