Change Your Brain Every Day - In What Ways Can a Brain Injury Affect Your Life?

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

The fallout from having a brain injury can be far more significant than you might expect. Headaches, fatigue, and brain fog are only the lesser conditions, but did you know those who have suffered brain injuries have higher rates of depression, suicide, and addiction? In the second episode of “ Brain Trauma Awareness Week”, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the ways a brain injury may affect your life.

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. We are talking about TBIs this week, traumatic brain injuries. As I said in the last episode, if you listened, I prefer to differentiate TBI as a neurosurgical ICU nurse. To me, TBI meant you split your skull or you had a drain in your brain and you were unconscious or in an induced coma or naturally induced coma. So I like to differentiate that term, if we could, for people who have not

lost consciousness or not had a major accident to the point that you have been in an ICU unit, maybe you never even lost consciousness, right? So maybe it's a closed brain injury. You never split your skull open. You never lost consciousness. But if you listen to the last episode, it can happen just from a really bad car accident or falling out of a tree or... Falling down a flight of stairs.

Right. Whatever it is, even if you didn't lose consciousness or you lost consciousness and never went to the hospital. So now today we're going to talk about the fallout. So what are things that are potential that could happen if you've had a brain injury? So as a psychiatrist I had no idea and I'm an army trained psychiatrist where head injuries were a big deal for the soldiers I was treating when I was a resident. But what research has come to believe, traumatic brain injury is a major cause of homelessness. That 58% of the homeless men and 42% of the homeless women in the study in Toronto had a significant brain injury before

they were homeless. So I know we've talked about this a long time ago, but my mom had a really, really bad brain injury. Again, it was closed, but this one was bad. She had a brain bleed from her brain injury. She fell really hard on her face, cracked her teeth. She did a whole bunch of stuff. Damage, big damage. She ended up having a brain bleed from it. She had a really bad concussion and she owns a very successful business. For about that first year afterwards, it was really frustrating to her because for a little over a year, what she complained about was, I mean, initially the initial part was just like severe headaches, severe fatigue, like she couldn't wake up, just sleepiness.

She had no energy and she had massive brain fog. The fallout though, after that initial couple months was still, she couldn't understand why she was still suffering from fatigue. She suffered with fatigue for the longest time, way longer than people think they're going to. So fatigue, crazy brain fog. She couldn't end word dropping. Like her memory with words. She could think of the image, but she could not think of the word to go with the image. So she couldn't, she was word dropping. And so it was so frustrating, she'd start crying. And so this really had an impact on her business. She saw the numbers drop.

So when we're thinking about things like homelessness, that's the extreme end of it. But it impacts people's finances dramatically. I mean, it really hurt her business that year because she couldn't show up, right? She couldn't show up as herself. And so it was- So what is the organ in your body that manages your finances? Right. It's your brain. And so any damage to your brain, either from a toxin or trauma, can impact your ability to make money. So people go, oh, well, I can't afford to come and get

assessed. But you almost can't afford not to be assessed properly. Because continuing. By the way, they sent my mom away from the ER saying she didn't even have a concussion. Never did a CT scan. They didn't pick up the bleed because it was a slow bleed. Bleed didn't come, didn't show up for like probably, I think it was like a week. All of a sudden, she was not acting right. And we were the ones that sent her. I'm like, my mom's not acting right.

She's got to go back in for an MRI. And all of a sudden, you could see the bleeding in the brain. But they sent her. I'm like, my mom's not acting right. She's got to go back in for an MRI. And all of a sudden you could see the bleeding in the brain but they sent her out of there going, you're fine. I'm like, there is nothing fine with this woman. She had a severe concussion and a brain bleed. So that- So many people go to the emergency room and their CT is normal and they go,

oh, well you have a concussion. There's nothing you can do with it. Stay with us because we're going to spend a whole lesson on what do you do for it? And I have one more question. We cannot move on because this is the big thing that, no, this is important because now you guys can't see it. She's kicking me under. They know.

Cause you always tell on me, stop telling on me. Stop. I'm gently doing it so that like no one knows, but then you tell on me. Why do you do that? Because you're kicking me. So you can't move on until, because this is the part, having dealt with this with people personally that I know is so frustrating. You're living it, you're doing the plan, you're thinking it should be getting better, but it's not. It takes longer than you think it should. Okay, so how long can it take? I mean, not just like,

oh, it could be better in a couple months. What is the other side of the spectrum? How long have you seen, like how long do people need to be patient for? Because it's hard, it's frustrating. I mean, my mom, it took probably 18 months before she started to really get it back. And we had her doing many of the things. She was doing everything.

Except the one thing that didn't happen until a little bit later is her hormones were all trashed. Taked. And it's one of the things we've learned that your pituitary gland, actually the master hormone gland in your brain, sits in a very vulnerable spot. This is common. And it gets damaged. It gets jostled. And all of your hormones, or many of them are low. And hormone replacement can become critically important. She actually had to replace almost everything.

What we always talk about here is you can't change what you don't measure. And then one of the other things, because we always talk about hyperbaric oxygen, now in her case she had to postpone that also because if you have a bleed, you can't do the hyperbaric oxygen until the bleed. You don't want to put the brain under pressure when you have a bleed. Not until it's completely healed, right? So that postponed. How soon she could do that.

So these are things I think people need to know why sometimes it can take so long, right? So let's talk some more about the fallout. So we talked about homelessness. We talked about financial ruin. What's the organ of relationships? So what is actually, it's not your knee kicking me, it's your brain that can't wait until I finish talking. It's your brain, right? So having

a traumatic brain injury can change people's personalities and it can seriously negatively impact your relationships. Well, and you pointed something out really important. So it doesn't just change your personality because it affects your frontal lobes, which is huge, or your left temporal lobe or whatever. 90% of the time it affects your frontal lobes. But then that's huge. But it's also tanking your hormones.

Think about a woman in menopause. Oh boy, right? But if you, or a man who tanks his testosterone, now he's got no libido. That has an impact. No libido, no memory, no motivation, and no strength. That has a huge impact on your life. It certainly does. Suicide. There's actually a much higher incidence of suicide, depression, panic disorders, and addictions after someone has a traumatic brain injury. And we are helping someone we love who's got an addiction issue. And how many brain injuries has she had? I don't know how many of them actually led to some kind of a brain injury,

but she's had 19 car accidents. So I don't know how many of them were severe or not. I don't know i'm even more severe or not i don't know but but it's a lot and um i actually want to talk about we'll do this uh on the next episode about the erlin syndrome and how common that is after you have a traumatic brain injury i have one patient i saw who was wealthy good looking incredibly incredibly successful. And all of a sudden he wakes up one day and he starts having panic attacks. And he goes to his family doctor who gives him Xanax. I remember this. And that begins to affect everything. That made him worse. Right. And then he gave him Prozac. and now he's like suicidal. And you know, he called me and when we scanned him,

I'm like, when did you have a brain injury? He says, what do you mean? I said, your scan, just like I did with you, showed that you hurt the left front side of your brain. When did you have a brain injury? And he goes, two weeks before my first panic attack. I'm like, oh, what happened? It was mountain biking and the mountains around Los Angeles.

And he fell off his bike and broke his helmet, but never lost consciousness. So he's thinking he's lucky. One of your mild traumatic brain injuries or what we now say closed head injury and damaged his frontal lobes. And so you have low activity in the front part of your brain low activity in the front part of your brain and then you give them a benzo xanax lowers activity further oh that may not be a good thing prozac lowers activity in the frontal lobe so two things to lower activity to the frontal lobes and he's not sleeping. Three

things lower activity in the frontal lobes. And he's got like a half billion dollar company. And you like your glass of wine. Now we have four things that lower activity in your frontal lobe. No wonder you can't inhibit the bad thoughts you now have and it puts you at great risk for suicide and so I'm like, we have to prepare this and when we repaired it, he did so much better. But you can just see because most psychiatrists, family practice doctors, internists, OBGYNs never look at the brain, they're prescribing these powerful medications that change the brain and they're not dealing with the original problem. Yeah, and as we talk about fallout, we often talk about everything through the four circles,

biopsychosocial, spiritual, and as we're talking about this, you begin to see why people get depressed, why they become suicidal. Because I mean, it's not just affecting just as though your frontal lobes weren't enough, but it's not just your frontal lobes. It's your hormones. It's your relationships. All of a sudden, your business, everything begins to become affected. And so now it's like the sweater that unravels. Yeah.

Just one more story quickly. Is one of our friends who's actually incredibly famous and sweet and loving, never could manage his money. who's actually incredibly famous and sweet and loving, never could manage his money. And when I scanned him, he clearly damaged his frontal lobes. So incredibly talented. But, you know, even in his 80s, he didn't have any money. And I'm like, Jay, did you ever have a head injury?

He said, no. And I'm like, well, are you sure? Have you ever fallen out of a tree, off a fence, dove into a shallow pool? No, no, no. Ever in a car accident? No. And then he stopped.

And he said, I'm so sorry I lied to you. I'm like, what? I've had this happen so many times. He said, I was 19 years old. I was in a head-on collision. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. My head broke the windshield. And I was in a head-on collision. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. My head broke the windshield. And I was dazed. I actually lost sight for four hours.

Do you think that counts? I'm like, yeah, I think that counts. So if your behavior or the behavior of someone you care about is not what you would want. This is so important to consider. Image, if you can, if you can't, be on the rehabilitation program. We're going to talk about coming up soon. Stay with us.

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