Change Your Brain Every Day - Is it Depression, Anxiety, OCD, or All of the Above?

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

One of the biggest takeaways from brain SPECT imaging is that without looking at the brain, a surprising number of patients are completely misdiagnosed. Often times these patients are prescribed medication that makes them worse instead of better. So what are some of the most common misdiagnoses? In this episode, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen describe why certain symptoms of depression, anxiety, and OCD can appear similar on the surface, and how to know if you should be looking for a second opinion if you’re not getting 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, everyone. We are so excited that you're with us. You know, I know these are crazy times. We're going to continue to answer some of your questions. And

in this podcast, it's going to be, is it depression, anxiety, OCD, or all of the above? I love that. So before we get started, we're going to read a couple of reviews. And please post a screenshot of yourself and send it to us, tag us. But also send us your questions, your concerns, and your comments. If you go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com to the comment section, you can leave us a question, comment, or review. We really, really love your reviews. We appreciate them. They're what help us keep going and keep us rated higher and share what you've learned. And we want to know how this information is helping you

and what if you could change something affecting you. Just think about that through the episode. If there's something bothering you, what would you do differently if you could change it? So this is from the United Kingdom, Inc. D9, Inc. 9. The work of Amen Clinics books and podcasts has been a defining mission in my life for caring about human health and the wisdom is abundant and helpful. This motivated me to join the brain health coaching certification course. Thank you. I can't be more grateful for Daniel and Tana for doing this podcast on top of

everything they do. Thank you. And then from Progress Forever, I am ADD, and I think my son too. Your tips and tricks are so helpful to deal with our brains. I would love to give you 10 stars if I can. Thank you for everything. That's so great. So is it depression, anxiety, OCD, or all of the above? It's such an interesting question. It is. And we make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. On average, people come to Amen Clinics, have 4.2 diagnoses. They have failed 3.3 providers and 5 medications. I'm just not a fan of how we diagnose things because you can make so many different diagnostic criteria when basically your emotional brain is working too hard. We call it stuck in overdrive and you can't sleep and you're anxious and you're worried. If things don't go a certain way, you can get upset. And you could list all of...

But the question really is, what are you struggling with and how can you help it? And I generally think of OCD where you can't get rid of bad thoughts or bad behaviors, right? It's like you have a scratch on a record and the thought or the behavior just loops and goes over and over again. Anxiety is where you're just masterful at predicting the worst and have physical stress symptoms, muscle tension, headaches, tummy aches, can't sleep, diarrhea. And depression is just this sort of chronic sadness. One of my patients yesterday described it as a cloud that always follows her. For me, it was like mud.

Can't walk through it. So one thing I love about you, even though sometimes it frustrates me, it was like mud. Can't walk through it. So one thing I love about you, even though sometimes it frustrates me, but mostly I love it, is that you just are really resistant to labeling people with anything until you really figure out what's going on with them, right? And I mean, I've got family members where I'm like, I know what's wrong with them. They're just a real pain in the blank. But you don't do that. You're just very, you are very very very thoughtful about how to break down

what's happening for a person and one of our questions is um why is adb misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder or ocd and that's a really interesting question because the other thing there are a lot of things that are misdiagnosed as bipolar that i've noticed things like pcos which i had now i wasn't diagnosed with bipolar, but people thought I had like this very masculine, intense drive, which that you did, which that for women is not considered a normal thing. So that then makes people look at you like, why is that person so intense or so driven? And then that can cause problems. Part of it was the PCOS for women, that's polycystic ovarian syndrome, where their ovaries have multiple cysts.

Those cysts produce androgens, testosterone. Their testosterone is too high. And they can be more intense. More aggressive. And when we discovered that and treated her, I got this most bizarre phone call. I'm at work. I remember it like it's yesterday. So our first fight was on the kind of dog that we were going to get.

I wanted this cute little King Charles Cavalier, you know, a lap dog. You want to just pet him, makes you happy. And she wanted- I like big protection dogs. Killer. No, no. Yes, you wanted like killer. No, but I like Mastiff, Shepherds, Dobies, Rotties. And then, so we get her PCOS treated and she calls me up and she found a pocket poodle

online. And she said, don't you think that would just be so cute to have like, you know, a little dog you could put in your purse. And I'm like, who stole my wife? It's like, did aliens come and just like occupy her body? And then we end up with this little yappy thing, Tinkerbell of all things. And I'm like, how did this happen? But, but, but along with that was also, I started nesting. I didn't want to be on the, I always wanted to be on go, go, go, go work out two hours a day just to burn off the energy. It's just, and so all of that sort of settled down. I

wanted to be home more. I was more cuddly. Um, and I thought something was wrong with me to be quite honest with you. So for this person who's asking, um, I think people get misdiagnosed because that kind of drive, not just from PCOS, but from when you've got intense drive of any kind, sometimes people look at it and other people on the outside are like, Whoa, that's like, that's like not normal energy. And so that's, that's one of the things I just wanted to address at our clinics. What we do is we take your whole profile, right? We're going to test your blood. We're going to look at your brain. We're going to look at your nutrient levels, your hormones. And that's why it's just so important so you don't get misdiagnosed. So let me answer this question specifically.

Because ADD often gets misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. So bipolar disorder, like the name implies, is you go between two poles. That you have periods where you're normal, periods where you're manic. So it's also called manic depressive disorder. Manic is you have extra energy. You don't need to sleep. Your thoughts go fast. You could become hypersexual, hyperreligious, spend money impulsively.

You can even become psychotic and believe you're an agent of the Russians or that the NSA is tapping your phone, except they are tapping. They are. Anyways, I digress. It's clearly a period of time that's way different than your usual state. And then that could go on weeks, sometimes even months. And then you cycle to either normal or to the other pole where you're depressed. You can't get out of bed. You're sad. You're negative. You have suicidal thoughts.

You have no energy. You can't think. You're flooded with automatic negative thoughts. And you're up and then you're down. And they're weeks to months at a time. People have ADD can go through that six times a day where they're, you know, they get a storm of ideas and then they're sad, but it's not to the magnitude.

It's they're sort of always restless. They're sort of always a bit impulsive. They're always distracted. But are they as intense? Generally not. And that's how you can tell. And they're not psychotic. Because we've got someone, I have a family member who I think she's bipolar, but, um,

the extreme rages and like, it's not quite the same as people I know with ADD who are just goofy and, and, um, they can be goofy. They can make goofy decisions. They can be impulsive. And they're kind of funny actually, a lot of times or annoying with the impulsiveness, but this is different. It's like really intense. Um, and itiveness but this is different it's like really intense um and it seems like to me it's like it seems like drugs it literally it looks like this person is on drugs when that happens don't you think it can look like that it certainly can in fact i've accused her of being on drugs when in fact i found out that it was she was in this manic phase so and so getting the proper diagnosis is critical to getting the right treatment and that's where you know imaging

is so helpful or working with a psychiatrist who really understands now Now, OCD, and sometimes OCD and ADD are actually confused with each other. With ADD, you have trouble paying attention. With OCD, you actually have trouble shifting your attention. And both look like you can't pay attention. But the hallmark symptoms of ADD are short attention span, distractibility, restlessness, disorganization, procrastination, and impulse control issues. With OCD, you get bad thoughts called ego dystonic. You don't like these thoughts. Bad thoughts that loop and they go over and over and over again, or ego dystonic behaviors like checking locks, not stepping on cracks, having to have things done just a certain way, or you get very anxious or often very upset. So knowing the right diagnosis is critical to getting the right help.

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