Change Your Brain Every Day - It Is Impossible To Ignore This Anymore: New CTE Study

Episode Date: August 3, 2017

A recent study on football players at various levels of competition found a high incidence of CTE brain damage among collegiate and professional athletes. In this episodes of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss their thoughts on the study, and what that means for young athletes and their parents.

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. Hey, everybody. Welcome. Tana and I spent four days at a large Tony Robbins event. It was really fun. Lots of fun. And we had lots of fun. I actually can't hear anymore.

If you've ever been to a Tony Robbins event, don't sit in the front row. And take earplugs. Take earplugs. Yeah. And I was telling everybody it was sort of like going to a rock concert and church and having therapy with a whole lot of bad language. A lot of swearing, yeah. But it was wonderful.

We had a great time, and we came home, and today, front page of the New York Times, actually it's all over the news, a brand new study from Boston University showing that people who played professional football of the 111 players, they studied their brains. 110 or 99% had evidence of long-term brain damage. This condition we've talked about before called CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy but there's more because it wasn't just football players they looked at people who played football at any level

and what they found was that 87 percent of people who played at any level had evidence. So we're including, so hold on. So we're including junior high, high school, like any level, as long as it's tackle football. Correct. That's really scary. So 87% at any age had cognitive. At any level. But when they actually broke it out, the people, they only had two players who played peewee football and that was it.

Okay. And they didn't have CTE. Okay. Then they had 14 players who played just high school football, so that'd be like me, and 21% of them had CTE. Wow. See, it's an unacceptable risk in my mind that actually goes with the Mayo Clinic study that showed 33% of people who played at any level had evidence of long-term brain damage. So for people who don't know though we have to really talk a little bit about what CTE is what it does what it means in

your life okay because a lot of people they hear the word doesn't really translate. All right, so let's talk about what it means. So just think of it as chronic brain damage that lasts over time. It actually seems to get worse 10 years after you stop playing. But 91% of the college players had evidence of CTE and 99% of the NFL players so what scared me about this article was that 96% of these people that showed evidence of CTE had

behavioral or mood symptoms or both and 86% had cognitive impairment, if you actually read that part of the study, 96% of people with mild CTE had behavioral or mood symptoms. So these are the people we see. 85% had cognitive symptoms. Of those who had severe CTE pathology, high level of behavior and mood symptoms, 95% of them had cognitive symptoms, 85% had dementia. So when you think about the players we see, and I want to get to this in a little while, because obviously the focus has been on football. They're not including hockey and boxing and all these other sports, but I want to talk a little bit about that too. But when we think about the players that we've seen in our clinics,

hundreds of them now, domestic violence. You know, they've been arrested for fighting. They can't keep their jobs. Some of them are homeless, bankrupt. So what we're seeing in the study. We're actually seeing somebody this week who's imminently suicidal. Right. And he's 43.

Right. And people don't want to believe that it has anything to do with football. And I got to look at his brain and it's, it's, it's not great. But what nobody knows. So after I read this study, I emailed my friend, Peter Landesman, and Peter was the writer and director of the movie concussion. And I'm like, Peter, concussion to the hope that that's what people don't know, that if you've been bad to your brain, you can put it in a healing environment

and often repair it rather than, my worry with this study is there's going to be a lot more suicides of people who played college football or professional football because they will not have hope or we're calling another one of those bad bad bad this is bad news without 80 of our players who went on our program that we do here at amon clinics showed high levels of improvement in memory, mood, sleep, attention, but you have to put the brain in a healing environment. Well, and one of the things, because I remember very

clearly the podcast we did with Anthony Davis, it was really great. He's just a great guy who's really dedicated his life to helping others and really exposing this issue. And, you know, when I see some of the players that we've seen in here, you know, when I see some of the players that we've seen in here, you know, he talked a little bit about how in the community where he grew up, which was rough, okay, rough community, no, no money, you know, a lot of these guys are using football as a vehicle, right? If they're good players, it's like, you know, talking about brain damage isn't really going to keep them from playing because they're looking for a ticket out. They're looking for a vehicle out where he grew up.

And so, which makes sense. But when I see the people that we've seen and some of the issues that we have, you know, in addition to suicide, we're talking about domestic violence, homelessness, losing jobs. I mean, all of these issues, violence. And they're going to jail. And we, for the longest time, have not put together that it could have anything to do with something like playing football for a long time. Well, I think, you know, if you ask, we're now at 130,000 scans, probably more now. And people go, Daniel, single most important issue, single most important thing you've learned from all the work you've done with imaging, and that's mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about it.

Nobody knows that, you know, just playing a couple of years of football in high school or the car accident you have or falling down a flight of stairs can literally change the trajectory of your life back to speaking about Tony Robbins he has a new book out called unshakable and when we were at the conference they gave it to all of us and it's about wealth management and I was reading the core principles of managing your money and the number one core principles of managing your money. And the number one core principle of managing your money is don't lose it. Right. Right. It's like don't spend it stupidly.

Don't get involved in stupid investments. And I thought the number one core principle to brain health is don't lose brain cells. Right. Is do whatever you can not to lose brain cells because it's hard to get them back. I mean, you know, there's some evidence of neuroplasticity. Yeah, but it's not easy. You don't want to do that. And allowing your children to play contact sports where concussions are part of the games, soccer, horseback riding, football, hockey,

mixed martial arts, wrestling, boxing, cheerleading. I mean, you were a cheerleader, right? I didn't get thrown, though. I mean, the worst thing to do is be a flyer in cheerleading is they steal brain cells. And you just don't want to do that. But if you've been bad to your brain, there's so much hope. The work we talk about in the Brain Warriors way,

you know, or in Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. I have a new book coming out in November, Memory Rescue. These are strategies that can significantly improve your life. So one of the things I want to talk about, because you brought up a couple of things, the focus has been on football. So we'll do another podcast on other sports that are damaging people's brains.

But this is tough. This is a tough one for parents, okay? Especially dads, I think, even more than moms. Because football is the all-American sport. And so what do you say to parents besides the obvious? How do you really compel them, right? And I know what you're going to say. It's like, obviously, it causes brain damage.

But kids put a lot of pressure on their parents to play football. Kids put pressure on their parents to do all sorts of stupid things, right? I want to play video games. I want to eat bad food. I want to stay out late. You know, God gave you parents because your frontal lobes are not developed until you're like 25. So I would show them this video. That would be the first thing. So I had an interesting interaction with Jeff Arnold, who's the founder of WebMD. And he's a friend of mine. And we're at a conference, the Future of Medicine Conference. And this issue came up. And he said, I have a 13-year-old who wants to play football. What should I say? And I got him a big, you know, a famous coach

to help him out. And I looked at Jeff and I said, well, I'd say no. And he's like, but he really wants to play. And I said, Jeff, what if he said, I really want to do cocaine? How would you like deal with that? Would you go get him like the best drug dealer to help him do cocaine in a really good way because the level of damage is the same. I mean, I've got 130,000 scans. I mean, it's not like I just pulled this off of four people. I saw that level of damage and it's damage to the front part of your brain and to your temporal lobes. Now, why is that a problem? Right. Right. What happens in the front part of your brain?

Forethought, judgment, impulse control, executive functioning. Empathy. Right. Learning from the mistakes you make. Right. Domestic violence. You brought that up. It often comes from a lack of impulse control and empathy. Temporal lobes, learning, memory, mood stability, temper control. And if you damage the part of your brain that gives you dark, evil, awful thoughts when damaged, and then you hurt the frontal lobes, which are the break, those dark, evil, awful thoughts, get out and you can either hurt yourself or hurt someone else. So yet another reminder, this study is yet another reminder we need to protect our brains. But the one thing they're not talking about is rehabilitation. And it just, it makes me crazy

because you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. We can prove it. I've published papers on it. Why are you kicking me? Why are you kicking me? Because I want to talk about what they can do. I don't want to jump off that subject. Well, at least you didn't hit me in the head. I don't want to leave the subject before we finish what parents can do.

So before you move on, let's talk about and make sure that- Ping pong, tennis, golf. But also show them, educate them because a lot of kids, if they really understood why, um, let's help them understand why this isn't a good idea for them. Show them this video, show them the study and give them other options. Like you just said, like give them options like tennis or our clinic our clinic directors in atlanta has a son that was playing right and had then had a concussion and he decided to stop playing and gg said why he said i love

playing football he said i'm going to love my wife and my children more than i love football now some of you are going to play. You're just going to do it, right? When we were at the Tony Robbins event, we were sitting next to, you know, a really excellent up-and-coming boxer, a cruiserweight boxer, and he's not going to stop.

And so what I said, if you're not going to stop, you're going to engage in something that we all know is hurting your brain. You have to continually rehabilitate it. So Ray Lewis, the famous Baltimore Raven linebacker, he actually, he wasn't going to stop playing. I mean, he's making $10 million a year. He put a hyperbaric chamber in his house. So after every practice, after every game, he would go in the hyperbaric chamber along taking certain supplements, eating right, not being overweight. So if you're gonna, and

you know, I mean, quite frankly, if you're a firefighter, you're in a brain damaging sport. If you're a police officer, you're in a brain damaging sport. If you're a police officer, you're in a brain damaging sport. If you're a longshoreman, you're in a brain damaging sport. If you're married to a redhead, that could be a brain damaging. Not as long as you're nice. So if you are at risk, then you always want to be doing things to rehabilitate your brain. So diet matters, sleep matters, the supplements you take matters, so on. Excellent.

So show your children this video or anyone you know that you love and show them other options. I think one of the things is people don't like deprivation, right? They don't want to feel like they're losing something. So figure out what else they might do. Yeah, but you're going to be losing brain cells and that's not a good thing. Right, but instead of focusing on just the negative, figure out what else that they actually could love and change to and put their passion into something new. There's a study, and we may have talked about it, it was in the Los Angeles Times,

where they looked at all the sports and who lived the longest. And people who played football and soccer actually lived the shortest. Runners didn't really get a big boost in longevity. It was people who played racket sports that actually lived the longest. Tennis, squash, racquetball, table tennis. So it's why three hours a week I play table tennis. Excellent. All right. Thanks, everybody. Protect your brain.

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