Change Your Brain Every Day - Jobless & Homeless: Suffering in the Shadows – Part 3 of an Interview with Anthony

Episode Date: April 19, 2017

In part 3 of the Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast series with NFL and USC football star Anthony Davis, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana interview Davis, now 30 years removed from his professional playing days, to discuss how a post–football lifestyle can either powerfully influence positive brain health, or, as in the sad stories of many former teammates, can take its tragic toll.

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. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. I am here with Tana, and we are here with our friend, Anthony Davis, Hall of Fame running back from USC, former NFL player, and someone who was scanned in 2007 and again in 2017, showing remarkable improvement, in large part because he did what we asked him to do.

I just like what I say with my patients, just please follow the program and do it. Don't change it. And he's good at being coach but what we're going to talk about on this podcast uh we're going to call it in the shadows because there are so many people throughout the world suffering with brain damage in the shadows and they're being judged by other people they're being diminished or forgotten and we want to shed light before we before we get started i just want to say um because anthony davis you know he says he'll you you come in and you say you're a good soldier you're a good ambassador you do all these good things you know as far as following through but i just want everyone to know how much we appreciate you because what you're doing is really important. And you're not only, we're very proud to call you a friend, but it's really important what you're doing and the message you're getting out there because this In the Shadows topic is, it's way too big of a story.

And we need to do a better job. So thank you for being here with us and doing well my pleasure it just i'm very fortunate to be able to be on this program here for 10 years that that that's what i marveled 10 years that's why i'm sort of lost like was it really 10 years and so what i when i'm an ambassador for this cause and i embrace it and i put the word out wherever I go and this is a team effort for I love that and so when we first met and you know I think it's fair to say the NFL was really having trouble with the truth on this issue um what were you seeing then among other people who played football at a high level? What kind of damage I saw?

Well, I met guys that didn't even, I met one guy, and I wouldn't want to mention the name, but a family, and would embarrass, who's no longer here, too. He didn't even know me. He played with me, played with me a couple years, didn't know me. I actually walked to him and says, hey, how you doing? I'm your ex-teammate. Well, you look like him him but you're not him

So that was very severe So his wife was there and he Well of course it was dementia full blown dementia And so Like I said my other I have another ex-teammate who's doing better Now but who lost Memory we had another guy who I played

Against whose brother was my teammate Rob McNeil we lost Fred McNeil who i played against whose brother was my teammate uh rob mcneil we lost fred mcneil who i played against in college and professionally and then there's a lot more people we don't even know about they're out there wandering the streets families don't know where they are don't know how to handle the situation and they don't really don't they don't really know what kind of damage they have since since you brought up fred i actually treated fred and i remember my first session with fred and he's describing he's an attorney sure so fred's a bright guy he uh played at ucla and then for the minnesota vikings and went out, got out, and went to law school at UCLA.

I mean, he's a smart guy. But he started losing his focus, his memory, his impulse control. He changes his personality. And Tia, who's like the most loving person on the planet, just thinks he doesn't love her anymore and they get divorced and when i'm talking to him he's telling me about the scissors he has up next to an artery in his arm and he's ready to kill himself and i'm like oh my god you know was urgent and so he had severe depression and he was in starting into dementia and that's why he couldn't

do his caseload as an attorney so he's gotten divorced he can't do his job he's gotten divorced. He can't do his job. He's feeling more alone and isolated. And his brain was clearly not healthy. There are severe consequences to long-term brain damage. Well, and that's what I want to know. I have a question because we hear stories, lots of them, all the way from some of these guys who just sound like jerks, quite frankly, when you see it on the news. You see on the news these guys that are whatever, anything from fighting dogs to beating up their girlfriends

to all the way to committing suicide. And it's really sad. And murder. And we think of it as, oh, they're bad guys if we don't know the backstory. But you know the backstory. So some of these guys that are getting arrested for some of these crazy things, what do you know about them? Were they always bad guys? Well, first of all, when I see that, since being in this program, and before that, there's some issues up there anyway.

Not that I know it is, because there's a lot of trauma there and traumatic brain trauma they've had from the game. That's what it is. When you get beat in the head, something's got to give right you know your brain just can't absorb without having a bad reaction and that's what i've been what i do now i look at how guys talk and when they get interviewed i see the glaze in their eyes i see the speech so you see the actual symptoms i see the symptoms i mean i'm from a novice standpoint but when I see a guy get hit, oh, God, you know, he's got a concussion. He shouldn't play.

So not being a doctor, because I'm not, but I use common sense. Well, and you've been on the other side. Yeah, the common sense is, you know something? When you hear about these episodes, these former players and current players, that's due to what they're doing on the field. And do you know a lot of them who ended up sort of looking like jerks to the public but weren't always that way? Yeah, absolutely.

So they were good guys at some point? Well, no, they were good guys. Some of them are. There's a small percentage of them that started out. But as a whole, these are decent people. If O.J. gets out of jail a whole, these are decent people. Yeah. If OJ gets out of jail this year, I would love to scan him. I'm staying out of that one.

I'm making no comment. I don't know. I don't know about that one, Doc. I'm making no comment there. You want everybody's brain. There are some issues with there, too. So, you know, everyone knows that now. So I think this uh narcissistic

a sociopathic issue there uh that needs to be addressed but it's a lot of problems but even if you think of narcissism right or sociopathy yeah so there's actually a study it's fascinating fascinating study on people who have antisocial personality disorder. And a scientist from USC, Adrian Rain, he scanned a group of them, and then he compared them to healthy people. And you know how he found them? It's really interesting how he found the people with antisocial personality disorder. He went to temporary job agencies and because they lose their job a lot right if you don't if you can't follow the rules and he found they actually had 10% less volume in their frontal lobe so that part of your brain that's involved in focus and forethought and judgment and

impulse control that if that is damaged you're less likely to be able to conform your behavior to societal rules and we've actually scanned a hundred murderers and the damage in their brain is actually well they think that caligula had that i just had to throw that in his frontal lobes were wiped out because they had lead in the wine and also not the pipes it was in the wine he was drinking and also because they think he had herpes encephalitis see so behavior is much more complicated but getting back to traumatic brain injury and being in the shadows. There's a study from Toronto that said 58% of the homeless men in Toronto had a significant brain injury before they were homeless. 42% of the homeless women. And so some of the huge societal problems, dementia, depression, homelessness, addiction, are often the downstream effect of traumatic brain injury. Well, we've certainly seen this even in my own family.

But you have seen this in your NFL family, in your football family. I've seen it in all walks of life. People I've been around, I see it all the time. I see it every day. I mean, I have family issues. I have friend issues who have. Don't most of us, right? Yeah, we all have it.

We all have a story behind that. So it's a societal. Yeah, it's easy to call people bad. Sure. It's a societal problem. And we need to get our arms around it and try to do the best we can with that problem. Yeah, Daniel calls me the judge It's probably true. But knowing you makes it hard to be as judgmental judge. Tell you to judge. I think he called you the warden

He always says I should have been a judge or a cop so But actually you'd be pretty good based on your your your command and stuff here. Oh, thank you. I'm going to take that as a compliment, whether it was meant that way or not. But, but knowing our work makes it harder. It makes it harder to be black and white. It makes it harder to be completely judgmental. And sometimes I'm like, I don't want to know the backstory because I just want to be mad

about the behavior, but you can't. When you know the backstory, you suddenly can't because that person now becomes a patient because you have empathy. They become a person. And Dov Stoyevsky, the famous Russian author, said you can tell about the soul of a society not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.

That when people do bad things you at least have to ask the question how healthy was their brain right and uh the wrestler chris benoit ben walk who murdered his wife and then committed suicide, somebody's at least got asked the question, was traumatic brain injury involved? Because it then often leads to alcohol abuse, which lowers your brain function further, which then, you know, I always say we all have bad thoughts. I mean, we all have weird, crazy, sexual, stupid, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. You know, our frontal lobes suppress them. And it's like, oh, that's not going to help you. Right. So we can't leave this conversation without these guys that are in the shadow.

So one of the reasons I'm the judge and the cop is because I am a byproduct of an environment like that. So it affects a lot of people. It's not just affecting them. So, we've got to do a better job. Sure. Well, across society is a problem, but when I see football, particularly football players and athletes, especially football players, if you have an athlete that comes out of a

poor socioeconomic background and the educational thing is not really forced, one parent not in the household, that's part of the development as well. Then when you play this game and somebody started getting pounded in the head, they're not even developed at the time. So a lot of those problems, I can say that's a little bit of episode of what they deal with is because of that. I'm a victim of that in myself just like you. Didn't have a truly structured home environment. And that's very important too in the development of your brain too i've learned so much being around this

so you know i started putting two and two together and that's that's probably why i've had a lot of the issues and well and it's not just brain i'm really happy you brought that up when we evaluate people we always think of four circles in their lives so what's the biology so that's where head trauma would come in but also things like genetics or exposure to toxins what's the biology what's the psychology how do you think what was your life growing up your development the social circle who are you hanging out with if you hang out with people who do bad things right you are more likely to do bad things right so biological psychological social who you hang out with really does matter right and then the last one is spiritual which is why are you on the planet

why do you care what's your sense of meaning and purpose? Because purposeful people, even with a brain injury, tend to do better than people who aren't. I'm sorry. No, no, no. I just want to build on just like you and what you just said. When I look at my life looking back, it was like I was in a cloud and I got out of the cloud because I was around the gun toters, the drug pushers, and the whole thug environment, the criminal environment, no proper guidance in the household. And I just look at the, I got out of that cloud

because a lot of my friends didn't get out of that cloud. And they're probably paying the price. Someone paying the price and someone no longer here. Prison, dysfunctionality, all through their life. And sport, was it sport that helped you get out well or what or what were you in it even at that time well i was look sport is what got me out of it and due to the fact of my natural ability but i had a lot of negative negatives pulling on me getting out of it because if you look back based on how i was raised i shouldn't even be here high five i shouldn't be here if you knew my background because i was raised by a bunch of

sociopathic ignoramuses that's the kind of environment totally relate that i was all right we're going to talk about that in the next podcast how your environment affects uh the rest of your life stay with. You're here with us on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We have a special gift for you. It's an opportunity to win an evaluation at the Amen Clinics. All you have to do is subscribe to this podcast, leave a review, and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics and the work we do, go to amenclinics.com. You can also learn about our nutraceutical products

at brainmdhealth.com. Thanks for listening.