Change Your Brain Every Day - It’s Not Your Brain Cells that Age, It’s Your Blood Vessels

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Conventional wisdom has typically expressed that the aging process in brain cells is what eventually leads to cognitive decline in adults. However, we have since learned that this isn’t necessarily true. Rather, it’s the aging and degradation of your blood vessels that restrict blood flow to the brain that’s the real problem. In this episode, Daniel and Tana continue their lesson from the 6-week live class by discussing ways to keep your blood vessels healthy.

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. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you

and we hope that you will join us in the challenge. So the mnemonic we created is bright minds. This will help you remember the 11 risk factors. So B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. It's also associated with depression, ADHD, and schizophrenia. And why is blood important? Many reasons.

What specifically? Oxygen? Is that what we're talking about? So oxygen would be one. Yes. Do you have any other ones in mind? So many reasons. I'm trying to figure out which one you're looking for.

I'm looking for all of them. Okay. Well, oxygen is the big one. Without oxygen, the brain dies. The brain is the most metabolically active organ in the body. It's 2% of your body's weight, but it uses 20 to 30% of the calories you consume, which is why food is so important. 20% of the oxygen, 20% of the blood flow. It's the most expensive

real estate in your body. So here we're in Orange County. So it's sort of like Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach. In New York City, it would be Manhattan. It's Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. I don't know what we say in san francisco we get it you got it okay timber on belvedere ah love those areas um it's the most expensive real estate you're gonna take care of it are you gonna trash it i mean let's be serious about this. So blood carries oxygen. It also carries nutrients, as you know. But one of the most important functions of blood flow is it takes away the trash. It takes away toxins. And so when you have lower blood flow to an organ, it prematurely ages the organ. And what we found is whatever's good for your brain is also good for the health of your skin, right? And so-

So when your skin begins to, like when you see people have been smoking for a long time and their skin gets that leathery look, the skin is an outside reflection of what's going on in your brain, but it happens to your brain first. And so if you want prettier skin, you want to work on having a healthier brain. And so, you know, last week we talked about brain envy. I want you to have blood flow envy. And for each of these risk factors, you know, I horrified myself a couple of years ago and I went, oh, I could summarize all of my work in three words, care, brain envy, stop doing things that hurt it, do things that help it. And you just have to know the list. We're going to go over much of that list tonight. But so I want you to have blood flow envy, which is care about your blood vessels, avoid anything that hurts them and do things that help them. And I talked to you about my nieces.

And this is Alizé's original scan. It's horrified. When she was 13. It's actually literally one of the worst 13-year-old scans I've seen. And I've seen a lot. And it's weird because it doesn't reflect her. Well, at the time, she was much more emotional. Yeah, but she's still got really good grades she's a

caring human i mean she's but she's on the edge right that she has no reserve right in her brain so she could go over the edge if we're not careful she's much more vulnerable to having a mental health challenge than once we put her in a hyperbaric chamber, put her on some supplements and medication. And I mean, she's so much better. So this goes to the point, you are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it.

I really love that. And she is. She just got. Compared to me. Like I didn't have one decoration in academics until I was in college. She was just put on the principal's list for being a 4.0 student. Yeah, she's really special. She was her graduation speaker as well.

For my eighth grade. Okay. Brain cells don't age. Rather, it's your blood vessels that age. This should really concern you, that when you know that your brain could live a long time in a healthy way if you keep your blood vessels healthy. So how do you do that? So you avoid things that hurt it and you do things that help it. So how do you know if you have a blood flow problem if you can't come and get a scan? And a number of the questions were, well, if I get a spec scan done locally, will the person

reading it know what to look for? And the answer is probably not. That's why we decided to expand our clinics around the country so people could have access to this information. So a scan like with Alizé will tell you if you have low blood flow. If you're not exercising, you have low blood flow. What do you think the percentage of people not exercising is? That's a tricky question. Not exercising, not exercising enough, not exercise, you know, because a lot of people think they're exercising, but they're not getting enough exercise. So what would you say is a good rule? You need to do a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes, like at least five days a week, and it should be somewhat intense.

So I say walk like you're late, 45 minutes, four times a week. There's actually a study that shows that decreases depression as good as antidepressant medication, and then put two or three times, just a half an hour of lifting weights. Now, don't hurt yourself. If you think you might hurt yourself, get a trainer. And it's basically, you know, do something for your chest, do something for your back. Do something for the front of your arms, the back of your arms, your abs, your lower back, and your legs. It doesn't have to be hard. And don't start heavy because then you'll hurt yourself and then you won't do anything for six months. So start light. Increase the weight over time. And we like something called burst training or high intensity

training, which means walk like you're late or run as fast as you can for 30 to 60 seconds. And then, you know, walk for, you know, maybe even 10 minutes and then burst again. It's one of the reasons I like hiking or in our neighborhood. I like, if I'm going to walk, I really like walking the hills because I just, I get that extra little bump in there. And I was surprised. I played ping pong with you and I, it was better exercise than I thought it was going to be. So I wasn't like dying at the end. Like karate, I'm pretty much dying at the end, but I felt good.

Like I was sweating and I felt good. And I was like, oh, this is, it's better than walking. I was like more challenged. Well, if I ramp it up on you i know but you can't no no you have to because when i play i play competitively you need to be nice at the end of the evening you're just like soaked yeah but you're supposed to be teaching me i'm trying to be gentle i can't play tennis with him i cannot play tennis with him because literally he stands in one spot and I'm running like across the whole court. Like I never like get a chance to breathe or stop or rest. It's ridiculous.

That's the idea. No, it's ridiculous. For me to dominate you. Only kidding. I'm only, trust me, I'm only kidding. All right. So if you don't exercise, likely you have lower blood flow to your brain. If you're drinking caffeine or using nicotine.

And last year, nicotine use among teenagers went up 36%. Yeah. And that's an evil ruler strategy we talked about. The evil ruler. We're going to talk about the evil ruler more. So get rid of the nicotine. Just get rid of it. That's bad, bad, bad, bad for you. And caffeine, really limit it to one, maybe two cups of coffee a day. What we do, and I don't need it at all, but we actually make like a quarter

caff cappuccino. I make it for her because it's my way of telling her I love her. And I'm like, did I tell you I loved you today? And you said, well, you made the cappuccino for me. Right. So we just have that part down. Limit caffeine, hypertension, 60% of Americans are either hypertensive or prehypertensive. It's a fricking disaster for your brain. As your blood pressure goes up, blood flow to the brain goes down. Now, low blood pressure is not good for you either, but high blood pressure puts you at risk for things like strokes, but it also limits blood flow to the brain. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's just moderate exercise for 30 to 40 minutes a day will dramatically reduce blood pressure for most people.

Any form of heart disease, heart attack, atherosclerosis, heart arrhythmia, heart infection, because your heart pumps the blood to your brain. Anything that's bad for your heart is bad for your brain. And I know this. My grandfather had a heart attack, and I loved my grandfather. I was named after him. He was my best friend growing up and just the happiest person I knew and got significantly depressed after he had his heart attack. And erectile dysfunction. If you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere.

And what I really love is on our program, people's sex lives tend to get better because they have better blood flow. And they have more energy. So that's what we hear. So fall in love with your blood vessels. Avoid anything that hurts them. We just talked about it. Do things that help them. Exercise.

Limit caffeine and nicotine, keep your blood pressure healthy. You should measure that four times a year. You want to get ahead of it, not behind it. And the first thing is not to go on blood pressure medication. The first thing is get your diet. Oh my gosh. They put me on blood pressure medication when, uh, cause I have to take a really high dose of thyroid because of the cancer. And when the last go around with cancer, I was what, 40, I don't know, I was in my forties. Um, so they put me on 275 milligrams of Synthroid, which is really high dose. And because of that, my heart was just racing. I was wired tired.

And they put me on a heart medication and it fell asleep at the, at a stop sign. And I'm like, I can't, I couldn't even function. Like my normal daily activities, I was dangerous driving. So I just decided I would do whatever I had to, to figure out how to not have to take that. So now if you have to take it, that's one thing, but try to figure out how not to. So it was miserable. Obviously protect your heart. Geninkgo. I'm a huge fan of ginkgo. It increases blood flow to the brain. That's why in Brain and Memory Power Boost, we have a significant dose of ginkgo just because of what I've seen to how it helps brain health. And there are foods like peppers and beets and oregano and rosemary. I love all of those.

That increase blood flow to the brain. So you often say that you should use spices like medicine. You should keep them in your medicine cabinet instead of your spice cabinet. You know, what do you think people would, if they opened the cabinet and saw saffron, they would think? They would look a lot prettier and taste a lot better. And they'd feel a lot better. And have fewer side effects.

Right. And then another treatment we like a lot is hyperbaric oxygen. Actually, after you. I'm in love with hyperbaric oxygen. It is my, like it's my happy place because no one can bother me. I feel like I'm in a cocoon. I just go in there and I just like meditate, take a nap, like hang out by myself. And whenever anybody wants to bother me, I'm like, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. So we actually have hyperbaric chambers in all of our clinics. And Tana had a hysterectomy last year.

And she just wasn't right. It felt terrible. I felt like I was just walking through mud. So I scanned her. And her brain was much sleepier. And so what do we do? I kept saying, I'm not right. I just feel like I'm walking through mud.

Yeah. And so the hyperbaric chamber has been really helpful so last night i sort of teased you last week that said something very special is coming so last night tan and i and chloe our daughter went to the premiere of justin bieber's new docu-series it was so fun now i know some of you are thinking, Dr. Amen, aren't you a little old? I'm getting excited about that. Are you a believer? Are you a believer? I absolutely am. For the last five years, I've been Justin's doctor. And he basically tells the story of how messed up he was. He was very raw. And his transformation over the last couple of years

to really become a fine young man who is able to do his craft without falling apart. And so I'm very proud of him. I just love his work. And in the docuseries, you'll actually see multiple times his hyperbaric chamber. Yeah. Because when I first saw him, he had really low blood flow to his brain.

That his brain was being assaulted. We'll get to infections next week. But his brain really was being assaulted by a number of infections. He came out publicly saying he had Lyme disease, but it's more complicated than that. And part of the treatment was to get better oxygen and blood flow to his brain. And he has fallen in love, like you said, it's his happy place. Yeah, it's his happy place, his chamber. Lo. He loves it. He sleeps in there. More perfusion. Yeah.

Blood flow to his brain. You know, it's one of the things when I met him for the first time, and I really understood what was going on with him, is when I realized how messed up the media is and how wrong they get it most of the time. And it was one of the first times that I realized he's got such a sweetheart, and he was struggling so much to try to do the right thing, but just really struggling to do the right thing sometimes because he just felt so awful. And that was when I first realized, it's like, oh, and I know because I can be somewhat judgmental once in a while. And you were like, it was the first time that I really understood the idea that it's easier to call, it's easy to call people bad harder to ask why sometimes. So yeah, just take it that I said that don't beat me over the head with it. Yes,

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