Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Keep Your Body’s Immune System Healthy with Dr. Mark Filidei

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

As we’ve learned in the past few episodes with Dr. Mark Filidei, there’s no shortage of brain burglars that can break into our bodies and steal the health of our minds. In this last episode of the series, Filidei and the Amens discuss the things you can to keep you immune system operating at maximum efficiency to keep those brain burglars from ruining your health.

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're talking about the things that steal your brain, toxins, infections, and we're going to talk a little bit about toxoplasmosis. It's

really interesting. It's actually a parasite. And when this parasite infects rats, so it infects many animals, but when it infects mice and rats, it actually turns them into cat seeking missiles. They lose their fear. Which is so the tox toxoplasmosis, the parasite, releases an enzyme that boosts dopamine in the pleasure centers of the mouse's brain. So the rat gets hooked on cat urine. So rather than cat urine go away if you want to survive it's like um heroin for it it's like no gotta have more and goes toward the cat rather than away from it so the cat then eats the rat and the toxo

gets to have sex and reproduce because it only has sex and reproduces in cats right and so it's the classic tale of eat pray love so if a tiny parasite can control the host um can control the behavior of its host how much control do we really have over our own behavior a little scary scary to think about. It's scary. That's why I really call it the invasion of the brain snatchers, because that's the ultimate example. Yeah, so the cats are obviously normally afraid. I mean, rats are afraid of cats. They don't want to go there.

The toxoplasma takes over their brain, so the cats survive. Guess what? In humans, it affects us too. Now, we're not a thing for cats. Well, some people might. But it turns out that it increases workplace accidents. It increases risky behavior. This is in humans.

Increases workplace accidents, risky behavior, pleasure seeking. Kind of the same thing. You want more dopamine. Suicidality. It increases suicidality. So it does kind of take same thing you want more dopamine toxo suicidality increases suicidality um so it's it's it does kind of take over your brain and if you never look it's easy to call someone bipolar it's easy to call them depressed it's easy to call them a personality disorder it's so much harder to go why but it's so much more fulfilling right for you and But it's so much more fulfilling, right, for you and I. Yeah, because we can fix it.

When we fix people, we're not fixing their mental health problem. We're fixing their brain problem. Right, the problem that's causing their mental health problem. The problem that's causing, yeah. It's the whole idea behind the end of mental illness. It's like these aren't mental, they're brain. And if you don't understand the difference, you lose because you'll start talking to them about their mother. Yeah, right. Talk therapy and then antibiotic.

Antibiotic. When they needed an antibiotic. So how do people keep their immune system healthy so that can manage the assault that regularly comes our way? Yeah, it's a great question and probably the biggest problem we all face now in our society because we're just bombarded by toxins. The more you know, the more you want to just run away to New Zealand and hide. But we don't, and so you have to deal with it. I know they just had that mass shooting in New Zealand. Yeah, right. So maybe that's not going to happen. Maybe Snow Island, Australia, Tasmania. So problem is we're super toxic right now with everything.

Electronics, food, you know, air. That is immunosuppressive. So I see a lot of Lyme patients and a lot of them that haven't gotten better elsewhere because the roadway wasn't cleared. So it's like a plane for takeoff. You got to have the runway clear. If it's blocked by metals and mold and whatever, you're not going to get better. So you have high mercury, high arsenic.

If you have candida. Right. All the things that prevent you from being healthy are key. Your immune system has to win this battle. Whatever bug we're talking about. Antibiotics aren't going to do it. Herbs aren't going to do it. Your body has to do it and has to be able to do it.

So it has to have a good diet. Critical. You eat junk, your immune system's not happy. It's not going to work well. Sure, McDonald's in the middle of the night is not helping us. Probably not the best uh sugar will immediately lower your immune response they did a study actually was mcdonald's french fries uh immediately vasoconstricted after you eat them oh you have to send me that study so yeah it's pretty wild in the in the new book i have a whole section if i was an evil ruler, what would I do?

McDonald's every day. McDonald's every day. Yeah, yeah. Although one of the fun, funny ones you'll like, if I was an evil ruler, I'd have Howard Schultz run for president because he's the world's number one drug dealer, right? I mean, caffeine is the number one drug around the world with Starbucks. And then I'd put the little Starbucks symbol on the White House. Yeah, that's good. And not just coffee, but, you know, venti mocha, triple frappuccino, whatever.

Right, it's coffee, it's bad fat and sugar. Yeah, lovely. It's a bad combination. So diet, absolutely critical, probably top of the pyramid. You know, you've got to eat well. Don't eat a lot of carbs. Organic is important it's definitely better so reducing your pesticide burden i recommend everyone go to environmental working group ewg.org website lots of great information there which pans to use or not to use

and personal care products can be really toxic yeah i know there's an app i like called think dirty where you can scan all of your personal products and tell you on a scale of one to ten Personal care products can be really toxic. Yeah, I know there's an app I like called Think Dirty, where you can scan all of your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing you. Yeah. And when I first did that, I threw out half of my bathroom. Now, I've been focused on being healthy for a long time. I didn't even think about my bathroom.

No, it's interesting. One doc I just talked to, just kind of a quick story, but her whole specialty is infertility. And so she gets referred by other doctors, these patients that can't get pregnant. They've been all the fertility places. All she does, she goes to their home, she'll charge them a certain amount of money, and she'll just throw stuff out. So everything has to be green. So's diet clean products she has a hundred percent success rate so far in failures for people that could not get

pregnant so well in a row they were here for Amen clinics we have more pregnant women it's crazy how many babies we had delivered this year but it's because when people get their brains healthy yeah their ovaries are more effective. So toxins are really a big issue, and we've got to eliminate those. So you need to be a brain warrior. You need to be a life cleanliness warrior. Just be aware. You don't have to be a freak about it.

You can be if you want, but you just want to be smart. So boost your immune system through diet through um detoxification sweating of any kind you know infrared sauna is great but turns out infrared not super important if it's near or far just sweat you're going to get toxins out dr genuis who actually did a study on this, he studied people, had them collect their sweat in an infrared sauna, regular sauna, exercising. Metals come out, toxins come out, no matter how you sweat. So sweating is good. Sweating is good. Exercise, of course.

Keep everything flowing. So lifestyle is really top of the heap when it comes to keeping everybody healthy. So it's not an infection, take an antibiotic, and you're done. Right. That if you really want to help, you have to support and activate in a healthy way your immune system so that it can lock away these infections. Now, what is the place for antibiotics? Because we always know your antibiotics can damage the microbiome correct so what's your thought on that so yeah i you know i'm a lime literate doctor so i treat lime with antibiotics when needed but you always have to be aware that

it is going to affect the microbiome maybe in an irrevers way. So you don't want to use it unless you don't really have to. They do have a place, but temporary. Always being careful to take them with antifungals so you don't want to get yeast infection. Probiotics to reduce any damage from that. So gut health is another really important one for just keeping your immune system healthy. So how do you have a healthy gut? A good, always keeps coming back, a good diet. Feed your gut with things that will make your microbiome happy. Probiotics, maybe, depends on what's going on. So we do lots of stool testing here at the clinic as well to see how the microbiome looks. Keeping that healthy.

80% of your immune system is in your gut. So that's a priority too. 80%. 8-0 system is in your gut so that's a priority too 80 80 right is in your gut so keeping your gut healthy is really it's job one right really because if you think that happens through lifestyle and diet critical if you people think of the what's the biggest barrier between you and the outside environment. You might think it's your skin, but that's not that much. It's about the size of an umbrella surface area. Your lungs are the size of a single tennis court if you spread them all out.

Your intestines, the whole tennis court and everything around it. It's a lot of surface area to police. So that's why 80% of our immune system is there. It's got a lot of job, big police so that's why 80 every immune system is there it's got a lot of job big job to do a big job well thank you so much what an interesting glad to help we if you want to see dr philliday call the clinic go to amenclinics.com we also have integrative and functional docs in our bellevue, Washington clinic and in our Reston, Virginia clinic. 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

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