Change Your Brain Every Day - Is It Possible to Feel Better Fast and Make It Last?

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

In anticipation of the release of Daniel G. Amen, MD's new book, Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, Dr. Amen and Tana discuss the importance of making decisions that lead to happiness, in both the short term and the long term. Dr. Amen also introduces us to the mnemonic, “BRAIN XL,” which you can use anytime to help remind you of these helpful principles.

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, everybody. We are so excited to start a brand new series with you on my new book called Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, Unlock Your Brain's Healing Potential to Overcome Negativity, Anxiety, Anger, Stress, and Trauma. It's based on this idea that I've been thinking about a lot as a psychiatrist. It's so many people who come to see us or who you work with, they engage in behaviors that help them feel better now but not later versus now and later.

Right. I can think of so many things that I've done personally and we'll talk about as we go in the past. And we do that because we want to put band-aids on something and make it, you know, we have to sometimes or we think we have to. So what can we do instead? Well, you were actually talking about licking Oreos. That's not how you feel better.

I was talking about when I was a trauma nurse. What did that have to do? There was a survey. Now you have to explain. I do not lick Oreos now. There was a survey. We were have to explain. I do not lick Oreos now. There was a survey. We were at an event, a marriage retreat, and they asked this question. They took a survey on how do you eat Oreos.

And the way I used to eat Oreos didn't even come up, which is really weird. They said, do you bite them? Like, do you take little bites and eat it slowly? Do you eat them all at once or do you dunk them in milk? And I'm like, wait, wait, what happened to breaking them open and licking out the center? That's how I used to eat them. Does no one else eat them that way? Because that's how I used to eat them.

So Oreos is clearly one of the feel better now, but not later. Oh, I had my comfort foods as a kid growing up, had to have my comfort foods. Versus Nutty Butter Cups, which is one of your recipes based on Brain and Love chocolate and almond butter. Right. That is Feel Better now and later. Right. So, anyways, if you pre-order the book at feelbetterfast.com, We'll actually give you four free gifts. You'll get the intro and the first chapter of Feel Better Fast immediately,

you know, before the book is out. Our Feel Better Fast quick start guide, get a jump with easy to follow tips. A Feel Better Fast audio series for powerful hypnosis, tracks, chronic pain, sleep, lose weight, calming stress. And we'll actually give you a downloadable version of Tana's brand new book, The 10 Day Brain Boost.

Talk about feeling better fast. Food is a huge part. No question. Food is a huge part. No question. Food is a huge part. And we want to make it easy. So I just want to, because I actually spent a lot of time on the opening of the book. And what I say in the book is virtually all of us have felt anxious, depressed, traumatized, grief-stricken, or hopeless at some point in life. It's normal to go through hard times or experience periods when you feel panicked or out of sorts. How you respond to these challenges makes all the difference in how you feel, not just immediately, but in the long run. All of us quickly want to stop the pain, me included. Unfortunately,

many people self-medicate with energy drinks, overeating, alcohol, drugs, risky sexual behavior, angry outbursts, wasting time on mindless TV, video games, or shopping. And although these substances give you temporary relief from feeling bad, they usually only prolong and exacerbate the problems or cause more serious ones, energy crashes, obesity, addictions, STDs, unhappiness, relationship problems, or financial ruin. And so the idea is how do you begin to make good decisions so that you feel better now and later? Like this. Yeah. Like rubbing the back of my neck. That helps me feel better now

and later. And what we're going to talk about. Because it does, it gives you a boost of, you know, it gives you that little endorphin boost, that little dopamine drip that you talk about. But it makes you feel better. It makes me feel better. It's an investment for later, right? But people don't think about it. Well, and we're going to talk about,

coming up, a new technique I have in this book called the ultimate brain-based therapy, which is how you can feel better fast by flooding all five of your senses at once with happiness. So what are some of the behaviors you used to engage in? Okay. So I was a trauma nurse, worked in a level A trauma unit. And when they put me on, we often had to work double shifts. So like be 20 hour shifts sometimes.

That's really hard in a unit that that's that chaotic. And then they put me on nights and you'd have to work 20 hour shifts. So you start at 630 at night and you have to go 20 hours. You want to talk about crazy. So you have to get home and go to sleep immediately, but it's morning. Okay. So it's really hard and you can't make your brain shut off sometimes that fast. And then you've got to go back. So a lot of the nurses, that's why you see nurses that are so unhealthy. It actually sounds dangerous. It is. It is dangerous. I was so scared I was going to kill someone because you make a medication error and it happens all the time. And so, I mean, I would pray so hard like that I wouldn't, and I would, and I'd be just, just willing myself to sleep, but you can't. So,

so many nurses will take sleeping pills and they end up getting hooked on medication because of this. They'll take sleeping pills. They start drinking in the morning to try to go to sleep. And I remember I actually took, um, there was one point I actually had Ambien prescribed. Cause I'm like, I can't not sleep. And I had a baby too prescribed cause I'm like, I can't not sleep. And I had a baby too. So I'm like, what am I going to do? Right? So this is not, this is a big problem.

I took Ambien. I woke up the next morning feeling really wonky. Like I can't, I was like, I don't know. I didn't put it together that it was Ambien, but I felt really weird, like weird, not good, weird, bad, weird. And I didn't put together that it was the ambient. I felt a little down, took it again the next day. Cause I'm like, I have to sleep. And so woke up the next day and was crying uncontrollably. And then I put together that it was the ambient,

but that's a perfect example. But we had nurses that would drink during the day. We had nurses that would, they'd comfort eat and eat donuts all day long. I mean, I started eating M&Ms in the middle of the night just to stay awake, just to make sure that I could actually pay attention to what I was doing. But these are typical behaviors that when you're in certain situations, it's acute. You have to do something. But we automatically reach for the something that is the Band-Aid rather than it's over the bullet hole, right? We're not actually doing something that's going to help us long term.

It's not a cure. And so for me, I realized I don't care what I have to do. I have to find a different job. I had to find a different unit to work on. As much as I loved working in trauma, wasn't worth it. It was not worth not being a good mom. It was not worth not being healthy. And it was not worth almost killing somebody. That's a great example of someone I wrote this book for. And in it, I actually opened the book with a story that I've told a couple of times, but it just fits so well. The story of Chris, who lost her 12 year old daughter, Sammy, to bone cancer. And the grief was so intense. And actually, we'll talk about it. I take on grief

in this book. The grief was so intense. She went to bed and ate bad food, drank alcohol, basically drank herself into a stupor. Right. So she was doing the same behaviors for a different reason. Hers was grief. Hers was grief. And on her five foot two frame, ballooned over 200 pounds. And on the two year anniversary of Sammy's death, despite being married and having three other children, she secretly planned to kill herself. And then I think she saw me on television for my book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. And she said, I'm going to get that book. And if it's a bad book, I'll kill myself tomorrow. She told me that. It completely freaked me out. And, but she just did everything I asked her to do. What I'm going to ask you to do, um, as we go through this series. And she said within eight days she felt better.

She stopped alcohol. She stopped the bad food. She ate better. She started to run. And within eight days she didn't wake up in a panic anymore. There's a really important reason why these strategies are so important. No, why it's critical is because it sounds like it's, oh, well, that's simplistic. If I stop doing this and start doing that, it's going to make me feel better fast.

No, it's true. When people have thoughts that are suicidal, like we just saw a star is born, right? It was so sad, so sad. But when people are having thoughts that are suicidal, I mean, as a nurse, as a doctor, you've seen this repeatedly. It's hard to explain to other people, but when you're doing things like taking Ambien, how I had that depressive, those depressive thoughts, they were uncontrollable. Or you're drinking like that, or you're not sleeping and you're engaging in these behaviors. You're having those thoughts. Those thoughts might not even be there without those

behaviors, right? It exacerbates whatever is there. It makes it so much worse. But if you stop those behaviors, those thoughts actually often go away. Sometimes they're brought on by those behaviors. No question. And so it clearly made Chris worse. And by engaging in the right behaviors, I met her 10 weeks later

where she was already down 24 pounds and she felt a zeal for life. That fast. And in the book, I have a mnemonic. I do that. And it's BrainXL. So this book is really centered around BrainXL. What's that? So the B is you have to get your brain right. And so we talk about avoid things that hurt it, do things that help it. We'll go through those strategies. The R is rational mind. You have to direct your mind, discipline your mind to help you rather than hurt you. A is attachments and how, you know, when our relationship is great, we just feel happy. And when your relationships are not great, it's the thing that causes people the most pain. I is inspiration. We're going to talk about the dopamine drip or the most pain. I is inspiration.

We're going to talk about the dopamine drip or the dopamine dump. N is nutrition, which is Tana's expertise. X is the X factor. What have we learned from Avenging that can help you feel better fast? And L, the reason you do this is not because you should. It's because you love yourself. So as we go through this series on Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, we're going to dive into

each of the BrainXL areas to help you feel better fast. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.