Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Make the Most of Quarantine

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed our society as a whole, but it has also drastically changed how people are spending their time. Generally, people are eating more unhealthy food, spending more time on the couch, and becoming more burdened with brain health issues like ADD, anxiety, and depression. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen give you some ideas to make your daily life more productive, more satisfying, and healthier. 

Thank you. 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 talking about pandemonium today. So how are you handling the pandemic? It's been going on and on and on. And we had hope and we got excited that it was ending. And oh, just kidding. And then school is starting and we're talking about all these things, but we want to know strategies. We want to hear from you too. What are your strategies? What have you been doing that's been helping you or what have you been doing that's been hurting you? Because you

clearly can do one or the other, help yourself or hurt yourself. So we are talking about pandemonium today. And before we get into it, think about one thing that you might learn. And then at the end, write it down, take a picture of it, and post it on any of your social media sites and hashtag BrainWarriorsWayPodcast. Help us grow this podcast because what I say in the end of mental illness, it will begin with a revolution in brain health. So help us get this podcast to as many people as possible. We've been talking about anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief, and healing those, dealing with those really starts by getting your brain right. So eating right, exercising, and then not doing things that hurt your brain. So being repetitively on phone games over and over and over again,

it'll cause your brain to melt. New learning is one of the great strategies to optimize your brain. See, I decided to redo the house during this time. That really helped me. I know, but chronic stress, which is what's happening to me, does not help. New learning, not new paint. Someone should have told me. I should have thought about it or someone should have let me know before I got rid of the furniture that we were going to have a hard time finding furniture. So there's like delays on everything. So, yeah.

But that actually helped me get out of my head. All right. New learning is a very important strategy. We talked about exercise. New learning. It's critical to decrease inflammation, which is a major cause of depression. And so omega-3 fatty acids and then killing the process. Well, and right.

And that's one problem with pandemic is that when it first started, people were like, oh, I can't get the food I normally eat. I can't find organic. I guess I'm eating gluten. I guess I'm eating rice. Things that a lot of us don't, if you're a brain warrior, you don't normally eat some of those things. But because we were a little nervous and we were having a hard time finding our normal stuff, we started eating things and then we got in that habit. And so we were just grateful that,

you know, it's like, we're grateful we have food. There was plenty of food, just maybe not what you were looking for. But that did lead to inflammation for a lot of people, which then affects your mood. So we've been hearing a lot of that. It certainly happened over here. I'm really affected by food, maybe more than some people, but that will affect you. And sitting, because we have been sitting so much, watching old movies with our kids, doing all these things, when you are in the house, that increases inflammation. That alone is going to make you feel terrible. And it's critical to avoid head injuries. So be really careful. We had a fuss on the new mats that we got. The new kitchen mats. Tripped on them. I'm like, she's trying to kill me. She's trying to get rid of me early.

Definitely not. And avoiding toxins, they're just everywhere. And when the pandemic started, people just bought disinfectants without reading the labels. Oh, I bleached everything and stripped off the surfaces. But it's a good point because we got ants whenever someone does construction in our neighborhood right now it's us um it for some reason causes the ants to come in our house since we had this ant infestation in my daughter's room and i see her walking into her room with a with a can of raid and i'm like what are you doing and she's like i'm going to spray this all of our windows are closed and i'm like you please tell me you haven't been spraying that with closed windows. I mean, that's highly toxic.

So we have a non-toxic spray we use. It's called Orange Guard or something. It works really well. But anyways, the point being non-toxic. Make sure you're doing something non-toxic. Including what you put on your hands, what you put under your arms, what you put on your body. Because whatever goes on your body goes in your body and affects your body. I know, by the way, cruciferous vegetables actually help to detoxify. So warm water with lemon and ginger, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, you know, those types of veggies

really help. And it's so important if you want to manage anxiety and depression to not get diabetes because diabetes can increase the risk. And this is where your food really matters. There's so many people that are pre-diabetic, actually more than a third of the population. I am naturally pre-diabetic. I have watch it. I that's why I'm so careful. And so getting rid of sugar and foods that quickly turn to sugar become absolutely essential. And you know, I'm sort of, it's sort of amazing. But even in this day and age, I don't know that a lot of people really understand the full impact or implication of diabetes type two, type one is a whole different animal. But, but I don't know that people like, it's like, Oh, that would suck.

I have to take medication. No, it's so much worse than that. And people don't really realize that because I grew up with my grandmother having to take care of her. She didn't move in with us. So she could take care of me when I was a kid. It was so I could help take care of her, but she went legally blind. She lost her hair. She almost lost her toes. She got heart disease. I mean, there's not one thing about this disease that's going to make your life better. So it's going to affect you in all kinds of ways.

It damages blood vessels, which it makes your blood vessels brittle and more likely to break, which means you're more likely to have a stroke, cardiovascular disease. It delays healing. I had a father-in-law who had it and he told me when he was 55 that if I have to take insulin, I'm going to kill myself.

And he had to take insulin. He didn't kill himself, but diabetes killed him. It took his eyes, it took his heart, it took his legs and ultimately it took his mind. So he lost his legs, and ultimately it took his mind. Now, this is not something you want. When your doctor diagnoses you as pre-diabetic, you need to think of it as an emergency. Yeah, I feel like we toss the word around so much about diabetes and pre-diabetes and obesity that it just sort of people are a little numb to what it really means.

All right, so I promised them tips on overcoming anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief. So we talked about- I talked about mine, let's talk about yours. Well, I want to give them some specific things to do. And we're actually working on a new public television special that is going to come out next the end of February together.

So it might be helpful to get their ideas too. Like let's have them communicate with us. Please go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Tell us what you've been doing to manage your stress and anxiety. If it's been really helpful for you, we want to hear about it. And one thing or certain scents. Using all five of your senses and your sense of smell is really critical. So lavender, peppermint, jasmine, honeysuckle, vanilla, find scents that work for you when you're anxious, when you're sad, when you're upset. And just play around with essential oils to see if any can reset your brain. Yeah, Chloe, our 17-year-old daughter, she really was affected.

She was depressed and she got really affected by this whole thing because she's very social. And so she likes to be out and moving. And so she didn't do well, but she ordered one of those diffusers and she does lavender and some other thing. It just, it's not only smells good, she actually says it really helps her to settle down.

The other thing, or saunas have actually been found to decrease depression. One sauna was found to have antidepressant effects. So that can help, knowing your brain type. And then we'll also tell you, well, what supplements tend to help with this or that type. There are actually 16 different types. For grief, and so many of us have experienced grief. I lost my father a couple of months ago. And what I've told my patients for years is don't wait to heal grief. The week after he died, Tana would come into my office and I needed to feel it. And I ended up

writing a poem that I did at his funeral called Good Grief. He's everywhere. And so embracing the feelings, embracing the sadness, and then not letting any of the ants steal your happiness, like I didn't do enough. And it's like, no, for the last five years, I did as much as I could. Right? So managing your thoughts, not pie in the sky, happy thinking, but accurate thinking really helps you deal with grief. And we always say with grief, fix sleep first. Fix sleep first because if you sleep right, you are then going to be more likely to think right.

And one last tip on trauma. We have an exercise we're going to talk about in the show called Bridging, that whenever you react and, you know, you're like angrier than you should be or sadder than you should be or more anxious than you should be, really try to go, what am I thinking and feeling? And then go back to the first time you had that. Really try to go, what am I thinking and feeling? And then go back to the first time you had that. So one of my patients is African-American. And when the pandemonium started, the societal unrest, that whole week she was just so anxious.

And I had her close her eyes and really think about what she's thinking and feeling. And then when's the first time she thought she went immediately back to five years old, to racial conflict that was really upsetting for her that she didn't understand. And she'd actually internalized that negative feeling for 35 years. And so I had her think about it while I had her stroke from cross your arms, go to your shoulders, and then just stroke down your arms for 30 seconds and really relive that with your adult self sitting next to you. And after about two minutes, it completely calmed down the anxiety. There's so much that you can do. I hope this has been helpful for you. What did you learn today? Write it down. Take a picture of it. Post it on any of your social media sites, then leave us a comment, question,

or review at brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and we'll enter you into a drawing to win either the end of mental illness or Tana's cookbook, The Brain Warrior's Way. Stay with us. We're going to answer your questions and also talk about Brain in the News. 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. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

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