Change Your Brain Every Day - Life After Your Breakup with Bad Food

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Dr. Daniel Amen’s new book Feel Better Fast and Make It Last is packed with tips and tiny habits for changing your quality of life quickly and permanently. Perhaps the most effective of all the strategies mentioned in the book is the elimination diet. In this episode of the podcast, Daniel and Tana tell the remarkable story of Jeff, whose life was changed forever after seeking out and eliminating the one culprit in his diet that was attacking his mind and body.

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. We're in our Feel Better Fast and Make It Last series. So this week, we're going to talk about nutrition, which is food and supplements. And this is so important. And before we get there, I want to read one of our podcast reviews.

Thank you. We love when you send these in. This was just submitted this week by three wily girls. Oh, cute. And it's titled, When Mama's Happy, The Whole Family's Happy. Is that true? I have deep experience with this. Yes, I do.

This podcast was the first podcast I started listening to nearly four years ago, and it's changed my life and my family. My husband had severe acid reflux and allergies. He no longer has to take medicine. Wow. My two girls, 13 and 14, are now eating healthy food as a choice, not because they have to. I'm a middle-aged woman with midlife issues, and I'm happy to report I run circles around women half my age. I've also learned how to love my brain, which in turn taught me how to love myself. That's fantastic. When mama's happy, the whole family's happy. So true.

I love that. Having a 13 and 14-year year old eat healthy by choice. Well, and that's, that's always our goal. So, I mean, when they're little, you have to make their choices for them, but pretty soon they start to make their choices for themselves, even if you don't want them to. Cause when, when they're at school, when they're with their friends, you know, whether it's nutrition, sex, drugs, I mean, I hate to say that, but you know, if you've got kids in and you know, they're.

How did we get from food to sex? Because we're talking about decision making. So what you really want to do is teach. What happened? Cause what you really, maybe because I've got a lot going on right now with my daughter and her circle of friends. It's just crazy. Anyways, TMI,

what you really want to do and what we have done and why we've had such good luck with our daughter and nieces is you want them to start to hear their own voice. You cannot be the voice in their head when they're teenagers and you're not with them and their friends are putting pressure on them to do things. Or when they're in college, you need them to hear their own voice. And so that's the goal. That's the goal. And so let's talk about nutrition and how to do that. Well, and when you and I wrote The Brain Warrior's Way together, we created this statement that is more powerful today than ever. The real weapons of mass destruction are highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high gly high-glycemic, low-fiber, food-like substances stored in plastic containers that are destroying the health of America.

And I'm not okay with that. I think we need to do better. And let me start with the story that we have told before, but it's so powerful. Jeff, 53, suffered with anxiety, depression, and insomnia for decades. He'd seen endocrinologists, psychiatrists, cardiologists, and sleep doctors with no relief. He tried multiple medications after a suicide attempt, But none of them helped him. Now, in medical school, and I went to what I would consider a progressive, healthy medical school. In medical school, I had to get aerobic points. I had to exercise.

We did too. Isn't that interesting? Two Christian medical schools, or you for me, Oral Roberts University, and Loma Linda for you. Well, Loma Linda, Seventh-day Adventists believe in living a life of temperance. So similar to our idea of the four circles, right? So it had to be, you had to work on all aspects of your life. Biology, psychology, social circle. And you had to temper, all of those. Well, when Jeff came to see us, we had him see our nutritionist.

And the first thing she did was put him on an elimination diet. And he sort of bucked it, didn't want to do it. But she convinced him to do it. And within three weeks, his depression went away. And as we often do, once you do an elimination diet, which is basically you just get rid of things that can hurt you and eat things that will help you, so you end up eliminating gluten, dairy, corn, soy, sugar, artificial diet.

She just freaked everybody out. So we call it the elimination diet. And I'm convinced there's a better word for it. But it sounds awful. It sounds like you're eliminating like anything that you normally have in your diet, everything in your house. But really what we do is we have you replace those things. We want you to take them out for a short time and we give you the things to replace. We give you delicious recipes, easy things to replace them with. It sounds hard. It's

not that it's hard. It does take some, some thought. Okay. But it's worth it because if you're not feeling well, what we want to do is we want to figure out what's causing it. Okay. So it's not that we're like, Oh, we're just like going to like change your life, ruin your life forever. That's not the. That's what it feels like. See, I didn't go there at all with this. But that's what people think. I hear them.

They write to me. There's just no way. There's just no way. I mean, I hear this all the time. There's 10,000 things you can eat. What we just want you to get rid of are the things that potentially could hurt you. They don't hurt everybody.

And the first thing I tell people is, look. So let me finish this story. Wait. Just give me two weeks. Okay, just- Well, you have a new cookbook

and if they pre-order the book, they can download for free right now the 10-Day Brain Boost. Right. Your new cookbook. Okay, give me 10 days. If you don't feel better in 10 days,

go back to feeling like a slug and sitting on your couch. All right. So anyways, Jeff did this and begrudgingly... Like many people. Got rid of the potential allergens or toxins in his diet. And he felt better. I mean, it's unbelievable. He'd been suffering for decades

and no one had ever talked to him about getting his food right. So his depression goes away. And so the nutritionist added back gluten. Nothing happened. It's fine. It's fine. Which doesn't happen for a lot of people. Then she added back gluten. Nothing happened. He's fine. He's fine. Which doesn't happen for a lot of people.

But he's fine. Then she added back dairy. And nothing happened. And he was fine. And then she added back corn. And he said within 20 minutes, he had a vision of putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. I mean, corn is like pretty, it's pretty common. So I just want to tell one quick story. Wait, I'm not done.

Oh, dear Lord. Okay. So he broke up with corn. Oh, I see. It's good. Nobody knows this. So if someone pulled a gun on me, I would break up with them. Actually, I would do more than break up with them. But. I can't imagine what would happen if I pulled a gun on you.

No, yeah, you wouldn't want to imagine it. But anyways, yeah. So he decided that it was a bad relationship, even though he loved corn chips, corn tortillas, popcorn. They obviously didn't love him back. And both you and I have been in bad relationships in the past. Well, and I want to point something out. And I'm not doing it anymore. And I'm damn sure not paying for it.

So I want to point something out. So we live this way. And I'm just going to be honest. I mean, there are periods in your life where like you struggle a little more than other times. Cause for us, we keep each other on track. We keep each other accountable and it makes it a lot easier. But I had surgery this year. I had a hysterectomy in April and, um, something really weird happened sort of unlike, I think what happens to a lot of people. I lost a whole bunch of weight, like right away. It was bizarre. I mean, like I got underweight, I think, what happens to a lot of people. I lost a whole bunch of weight like right away. It was bizarre.

I mean, like I got underweight. I was like 116 pounds. That's because your uterus was a baby. Yeah, it was crazy. But anyways, I got down to 116 pounds and I didn't really know why. I started like, I'm like, oh, yay, I get to eat whatever I want. And so I was like eating like crazy to try to put weight back on because I actually looked emaciated. And so I'm like eating like crazy trying to put weight back on. I sort of use it as an excuse for a couple

days. I thought, Oh, in a couple of days, it'll start to reverse and go back to normal. And, and all of a sudden that didn't happen. And so I'm like, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to keep eating a lot to try to put, like, I was eating like really fatty stuff and like, you know, healthy fats at first. And something started to happen. Um, so like I, all of a sudden I'm like, well, bring me a bean and cheese burrito. And then I'm like, I did that. And then I'm like, um, I forget what I asked for next. I think it was gluten-free pizza or something like that. But then all of a sudden, within a couple of days, I started to feel sorry for myself for having to be in bed. Right. So I couldn't work out for six weeks and I started to feel a little bit sorry for myself.

So then I'm like, I'm feeling sorry for myself. So I'm like, bring me some other weird thing. I don't remember what the weird thing was. I started having cravings. And I'm like, bring me. And I didn't even realize what was happening at first. I really convinced myself that it was because I was underweight and I had to lay in bed and not exercise. So I deserved it. I do this for a living. You gave yourself permission to hurt yourself. And I do this for a living. And I was absolutely 100% convinced that it was fine, that it was justified. And so, and the next thing I know, within about a week, I was sort of down and glummy and, you know, just funky and foggy.

And I didn't feel good. And so, I mean, I'm just trying to point this out to you because this happens. We get in these cycles. But you've got to be able to catch yourself and pull yourself back. So I immediately was like, all right, this is ridiculous. I need to get my energy back so I can get healthy. I need to heal. So I just started going right back to the basics, right back to what we tell you to do here.

You've got to start from ground zero and then go back and do this elimination diet. You'll start to feel better quickly. 10-day brain boost. and then go back and do this elimination diet. You'll start to feel better quickly. 10 day brain boost. So coming up, we're going to talk about how to get your attitude right about food, the feel better fast food rules, how timing matters and which foods to choose if you want better energy,

if you want a better mood, if you want to be more flexible. And reasons to avoid high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets. Stay with us. 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.