Change Your Brain Every Day - Memory Rescue: An Overview of the 11 Risk Factors That Steal Your Memory

Episode Date: October 4, 2017

In the first episode of a 12-part series focused on Dr. Amen's new book Memory Rescue, Dr. Amen and Tana Amen discuss the importance of keeping a sharp mind. They touch on the 11 risk factors involved in memory loss.

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 to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. This is going to be a 12 lesson series on my brand new book, Memory Rescue, coming out November 14th nationwide. And then we'll have a national public television special by the same name. And we just couldn't be more excited about this topic. And when you and I first met, your dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

And you and your sisters were very worried about him. He was a recluse. He wouldn't come out of his room. He had serious memory problems. He was on multiple medications and you looked at me and said, what do we do? Um, it was a little more complicated than that. Um, so yes, I did. We didn't know what to do. It was very scary, but to make matters worse, um, my dad and I weren't close. I hadn't spoken to him for years. So I was, you know, torn. I'm like, why is this my problem? And why, why am I supposed to be the one to do something about this? Which is a really

icky thing to feel and think at the time when you're going through something like that, when your family's going through that. Um, but you know, to have that thought, well, he wasn't there for me. Why do I need to do this? But at the same time, knowing you have to is frustrating. So, of course, I was asking you, you know, what can I do? I was sort of thinking, what can I do from afar? But that wasn't your answer. So. Yeah, no, my answer is we should see him. You should bring him down here. There are multiple causes of memory loss. There's multiple causes of social isolation. And there have been brain spec imaging. There's been a brain spec imaging pattern for Alzheimer's disease that was actually described in the 1980s. It's bilateral parietal lobe, top back part of your brain,

bilateral temporal lobe, hypoperfusion, so low blood flow. And so I thought, well, we should see if he really has the pattern. And if he does, well, what are the things we can do for him? We're going to talk about that in this series. If he doesn't, well, that's actually more exciting because it means there may be even more we can do for him. And when we scanned him, he clearly did not have the Alzheimer's pattern. Which was very frustrating and weird. Okay. So he'd become a recluse. We'd been told he has Alzheimer's disease. Um, he's not taking care of himself and now I'm told he doesn't have

Alzheimer's disease. So yes, there's some relief there. And there's also a lot of frustration. I am a nurse. So I'm a little perturbed that the medical community just completely let me down, let him down, let us down as a family. That's just not okay. It's a little- Well, and he was on a toxic cocktail of medications that I hadn't seen for many years. And I believed, correctly it turned out, that he had a condition called pseud which is he's depressed and it really appears clinically like he has dementia and took him off those medications put him on a different plan we'll

talk about that and within a couple of months, he's significantly better. And he actually starts leading Bible studies. So for people who don't know, Tana's dad was a pastor. So this had been his passion for many years. And he was also a seminar leader where he would teach people about the disc, which is a personality assessment that people use at work to help understand people. And what was it about six months later, he leads a seven hour seminar at church, at the local church. I mean, it was, it was pretty miraculous. Um, and you know, I don't want to just gloss over this cause it's easy to just go oh let's talk about the memory part of it but clearly there were issues in our family okay so there were issues in our family I think that's not an uncommon thing I mean that's what we do for a living so a

lot of people listening to us are having issues in their family um and along with some of those memory issues are other issues so you know he was a minister and we weren't getting along. I hadn't spoken to him for years and he hadn't been in my life. He sort of disappeared when I was young. And there was a lot of, there was a lot of emotional baggage there. So to have the opportunity to have him get better and have him down here living in my house, which I wasn't thrilled with initially. But that was

a massive opportunity for us to heal. And I, I'd never thought that would happen. Didn't actually even think I wanted it to, but that was a gift to be able to have that opportunity to, to take that time. And yes. So, you know, I thought I was doing it for him. Ultimately, you know, I think that that was a gift that God gave me to be able to heal that relationship. But he got to die with peace. He hadn't had peace in his life. So he died about five years later of leukemia. So something completely unrelated. His memory intact. But over that five-year period, he healed his relationship with me. He healed his relationship with my mom, weird enough, with my sisters. He had the opportunity to most of all forgive himself, to figure out why he had behaved

the way he behaved in the past and made the decisions he had made. And what a difference in the way you live your life at the end of your life and you're able to let go. I mean, I can't, I don't think there's a price you can put on that versus had he been in a nursing home somewhere, you know, gorked out on medication and never knowing and having the rest of us resentful and angry. Right. So I wrote Memory Rescue, not just for people who have Alzheimer's disease or who are worried about it.

I wrote it for all of us because, you know, I think there are many people who misplace their phone. There are many people who forget people's names, who struggle to find the right words that many of us as we age, even when we're younger, we struggle with memory problems. How can you make your memory as sharp as it can be? And if it's going to the dark place, how do you get it back? And memory rescue is based on one very simple concept that if you want to keep your memory healthy if you want to improve it if you want to get it back from the dark the dark place you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And that's why this is a 12-part series. In this one, we'll introduce the concept,

and then subsequently, we're going to go over each of the 11 risk factors and what to do about them. But before we get into the risk factors, it's important to understand a little bit about the brain and memory and how it works. So your brain has two very important structures called the hippocampus, which are deep in your temporal lobes, underneath your temples and behind your eyes. And the hippocampus is Greek for seahorse. And so I think of you have these two seahorse-like shaped structures in your brain. And that part of the brain, the hippocampus, so interesting, so important, so cool,

because yes, it's involved in getting memory into long-term storage. If you damage it, you can't learn new things, but it's also involved with your mood and it's involved with knowing where you are in space or your aim. And you're actually an amazing marks marksman right i mean you love shooting and you're very good at it um funny story um i come home and on the refrigerator is a target from tana where she had perfectly shot out this person's brain not person no, a target, a silhouette. Perfectly shot out the silhouette's heart. What is the matter with you? And I'm like... Yes, it was a message.

It was a message. You know how children, when they do something really cool, you want to put it on the refrigerator and celebrate. And I come home and there's this target on my refrigerator. And I just think it was a message to behave myself. It was a message, yes. You are married to a redhead, as you often say. But the hippocampus is also, so memory, mood, and movement, if you will.

And the hippocampus is so special because- See, my silhouette had no hippocampus left. The hippocampus is one of the few parts of the brain that actually produce stem cells every day. So it actually makes new cells every day, up to 700 of them, which I think of as baby seahorses. So your brain every day is making baby seahorses. And if you put the seahorses in a growth environment, you can actually make more of them likely to survive and thrive. If you put them in a toxic environment, you're more likely to kill them off or shrink them so they're not healthy. So the whole point of memory rescue is how do you make your seahorses grow and healthy or how do you hurt them?

So over these next 12 lessons or sessions that we do on memory Rescue, we're going to talk about all those different things, but some of them are a little bizarre and not things you think about, which I'm a little perturbed about, such as the impact of poor diet and early life stress on memory, like on children. That's not fair. What? So how I was fed as a baby and life stress, the stressful environment I was put in, which wasn't even my fault, affects my memory later in life. So we have to talk about all of these things. I had my team pull up all of these studies on memory since I knew we were doing this.

Do you need therapy? I do. I've been through therapy, but now apparently I need it again because that's just not fair. Well, that's one of the reasons taking your brain health and memory serious is important. It's not just about you. Like before you get pregnant. It's about generations of you. So one thought that has always just blown my mind is when you have a baby girl.

So when you had Chloe. Right. Chloe actually was born with all of the eggs in her ovaries that she'll ever have. And Chloe's habits will turn on or off certain genes in those ovaries, making illness more or less likely in her babies and in her grandbabies. So what you ate as a child was turning on or off the genes in your ovaries, making Chloe more likely to be healthy or more likely to be sick. So memory rescue is serious for you, but it's also a battle cry, which is why we wrote the brain warriors way and why the podcast is called the brain warriors way. It's a battle cry to get

healthy for you and those you love. Well, and this is not fair, but no one ever said life was fair. That is why I always tell my daughter fair is a place where they sell bad food and they have farm animals. So it's not fair, but I always think to myself, all right, well, that's, I don't want to ever want to be a victim. So I always know that there's gotta be a solution, some kind of a solution. I want to know what the solution is. So we're going to talk about that, right? Oh, we have a solution for you that is so exciting. It's so easy and it's so actionable. Right. And let me just highlight one of the really simple things you can do. We've been working on behavior change for a long time here. And this simple habit, the tiny habit is ask yourself every day,

if what I'm doing today is a good for my brain or bad for it. All you have to do is ask yourself that question and answer it with love. So love is doing the right thing. Feeling deprived is acting like a four-year-old and that's not love. When you do the right thing, that's when you should be cheering for yourself, feeling awesome and amazing. When you do the wrong thing, that's when you should be kicking yourself in the butt. Getting well is never about deprivation. It's always about abundance. And we'll have

lots of great stories for you. But let's just start by talking about how important memory is. So I think of memory as the treasure chest that holds your most precious moments from our first kiss, which I remember was in Long Beach, to the birth of your babies and grandbabies. Memories essential for your success at work, in relationships. Just forget your anniversary one time and see what happens ours is next week i know so memory is also essential for staying independent yeah i love my four children but honestly i never want to have to live with them I never want Chloe telling me what to wear what to eat or attempting to take my driver's license from me now I know many of you maybe have parents who live with you and

and that's amazing I mean I only say this half in jest, but I never want to be a burden. Right. And I like my independence. I like being the leader of our family. See, Chloe and I are like two little, you know, birds, but I want to be able to, like, I want to be able to hang out with her and have fun. I don't want to be a burden to her. Right. So if you value your independence, pay attention to us. And as I said, the strategy we're going to give you, you want to get your memory strong,

you want to get it healthy, you want to prevent memory loss or get it back, you have to prevent the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. Now, of course, not everybody can prevent memory loss, right? I mean, there are many factors and some of them, just like you pointed out, that are not in your control, like how they fed you as a child or having a traumatic brain injury or being exposed to toxins. But that's the whole point of this is you know better, you do better, right? So, so I started doing better, not only for myself, but you can then take this information and you, like you said, it's about the next generation, you know? So,

you know, people think I'm a little crazy. I have this, uh, this rule in our house. No one is allowed to call me and start drama in the mornings when I'm getting my daughter ready for school or, you know, whatever. Like it's an extreme rule. You can, because that was my house. That was my life growing up. And now I know the impact of all of this. It's like, no better, do better. Yeah. It's sort of a joke even, Oh, don't call her before the hours of blah, blah, with any of your problems. But I'm not kidding about it because I want to pass this on these, these, like that sort of calmness in the morning to, to my daughter.

So she can pass that on to her kids. There's no reason to have that, that nonsense going on in the morning. So having brain healthy habits, brain healthy habits are really, um, important. You know, one of the most exciting concepts in memory rescue uh that is based on our work here at amen clinics for the last 28 years is your brain's history is not your destiny um so even though you were fed terrible food when you were growing up and it was a chronically stressful environment, if you do the right things, you can reverse the damage. I mean, how exciting is that? And we've proven it in the big NFL study that we've done, which we'll talk about in a couple of podcasts, is your brain's history is not your destiny.

So before we go today, let's actually give an overview of the 11 major risk factors. And we developed a mnemonic called Bright Minds. I mean, it's a memory book, so you got to have mnemonics in it, which is Greek for memory aid. And the mnemonic is bright minds.

So if you can remember bright minds, it'll help you remember the 11 major risk factors. So this is really going to preview what's coming up in the next 11 shows. So B is for blood flow. So bright minds. B is for blood flow. So bright minds, B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. So if you're doing anything to restrict blood flow, bad. And the strategies are going to be avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it.

So we're going to show you what to do to increase it. Right. I mean, a simple thing like beats can increase blood flow. Right. R stands for retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. I, which we've talked about on this show before many times is inflammation. Well, it's in every one of our books. I mean, so that's, that's huge. And that's going to be

a massive part of this book. So inflammation comes from the Latin word to set a fire. And when you have inflammation in your body, it's like you have a low level fire destroying your organs. So eating an anti-inflammatory diet, taking anti-inflammatory supplements can be really helpful. G is for genetics. This stuff runs in families, but I always say if you have Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia in your family, it's not a death sentence. Right, it's a wake-up call. It should be a wake-up call to do the right things. Right. H is for head trauma.

Your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard. Your skull has sharp bony ridges. You have to protect it because head trauma significantly increases the risk of dementia. People who played in the NFL have a 19-fold increase in being diagnosed with dementia before the age of 50. Wow, before the age of 50?

Before the age of 50. T is for toxins, probably one of the most common causes of dementia. We live in a toxic society. We're recording this right after Hurricane Harvey. And the level of mold exposure for people who go back to their flooded houses is going to be very high. And it's not just mold. Think about all the water that sort of, you know, I mean, the streets, the trash cans, the, I mean, all the things that are going to be washed up, the broken sewer lines. I was watching the news and one of the nursing homes, it was so sad. The hospitals, it not only damaged and destroyed the food, it broke sewer lines. So all of that is now going to become part of their immediate environment that they're going to have to figure out.

So dealing with the toxins in your food, in your personal products, in the air, we're going to talk about that. M stands for mental health issues, ADD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, all increase your risk. So what are some of the mental health principles that you can use to avoid that risk factor or at least treat it uh i is for immunity and infections uh they ravage your brain this is going to be a whole new area of psychiatric medicine and we'll talk about how to boost your immune system uh n stands for neurohormone deficiencies, low thyroid, low testosterone, low estrogen, low progesterone in women are significant risk factors for memory loss. diabetes, being overweight or obese or both, significantly increases your risk as your weight goes up. The size and function of your brain goes down. Same thing for blood sugar levels.

Getting those under control is absolutely essential to keeping your brain healthy. And S is for sleep. Boy, I'm listening to you and I'm like, I have a lot of these risk factors, like in my family and myself. And there's a lot of these risk factors. So, and a lot of times people say you're so disciplined and I'm like, it's not so much that I'm disciplined. It's that I've got a lot of reason to be motivated. So you're appropriately anxious. Right. And now it's just a lifestyle. Now it's just the way I live. And what we want you to do in this podcast is be excited, be hopeful. There are actionable things you can do to keep your brain healthy. So stay with us. We're going to have a podcast on each of the 11 major risk factors that steal

your mind. And we're going to give you some very simple tools to help. Stay with us. You're listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. 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 The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.