Change Your Brain Every Day - Music Therapy and The Inner Symphony With Barry Goldstein

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

 Dr Daniel and Tana Amen talk with music producer Barry Goldstein about the healing power of music on the human brain and the calming effect it can have on animals as well. 

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. Welcome back. We are on segment two this week, talking about music in the brain with our good friend, Barry Goldstein. And yeah, so interesting how music can really change your state. I love talking about this. Well, we're also talking about the release of our brand new album. Your Brain Is Always Listening, which I just, I love the title of our album because your brain is always listening. You can purposefully direct your brain, which creates your mind by listening to music that heals people. Well, and as we often say, what is good for your brain is good for your heart is good for the rest of your body. And so when you're, when you're picking music that's affecting your brain,

it's actually affecting your body as well. And I think that's really interesting. Absolutely. Yeah. And the other way around as well, when you're affecting your body, your brain is listening to literally everything that's going on in your body. So I love the distinction. And this is one of my favorite things to do is give people a slightly new perception of how they think about music. Because I think of music as something that doesn't happen just to us, but it's something that happens in us as well. So we have an inner symphony that's going on within our bodies, our physical bodies that our brain is listening to. It's listening to our heartbeat is listening to our breath and it's being affected by what's going on in the physical body as well so our states our emotional states that are going on are have a have an effect on our brain you know such things as connecting with gratitude

which um i know that daniel you've done studies on this, on gratitude, and how that can affect our brain in beneficial ways. So and when I was looking up, because I wanted to include a piece of music on this CD about gratitude, I was researching it, your studies. I mean, just going back to you get to choose how you feel by choosing the inputs into your brain and your body, whether it's food, or music, or the type of conversations or the type of podcasts or television programs. Absolutely. You're listening. And it's being intentional.

Right. It's being intentional. So brain warriors, we often say they're armed, they're prepared, and they're aware of directing their environment. In my new book, Your Brain Is Always Listening, I talk about the bad habit dragons. And one of them is the oblivious bad habit dragon, where you're just not thinking about what you're listening to or what you're eating or who you're hanging out with. And warriors aren't like that. You're not going to win the war if you take a scattered approach to your health.

So I know you've been involved with music for a lot of different healing things, whether it's sleep or MS or Parkinson's with children. Tell us some of your experience to inspire people to really take the music they listen to seriously. Well, there are so many things going on in the world today that bring people into states of stress, states of anxiety and sleeping challenges as well. I think these are like the three major things that are not just specific to, you know, a disease per se that affects a lot of people when we're talking about stress, anxiety, and sleeping challenges. I think there's 75 million people with insomnia that are going on. And obviously, with the conditions that are going on in the world today, it's even more important. So again, as you said, warriors have to stay very focused and navigating that energy. I say, if you want to start with stress,

anxiety, and sleep, it's a great place to create healing in your life because they're precursors to most every illness that is, is regarded in, in health is geared towards these three things being precursors. So for sleep, you know, I like to play a piece of music about an hour before bedtime and really start a ritual with it. Sorry, somebody walks by and down. If he sees a dog outside down, he sounds ferocious and he's like the biggest baby. I got to send you guys some pet waves. It's music I've created for pets.

That's awesome. Did you really do that? That's really good. So music not only affects human brains, it actually affects animal brains. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And there's more and more studies and science behind it, you know, of music being used to calm dogs down in kennels. My music's being used for that as well for pets. And, you know, I created PetWaves when we adopted our dog, Woody, who's a rescue. And I wanted to welcome him into our home. And people, you know, would tell me, you know, I use your music all the time.

My dog loves it. People would send me pictures of their cats, like literally like laid out, belly up, you know, listening to my music and saying, you know, he won't listen to anything else but your ambiology series. So I said, I really need to create something for pets. And I did some research on dogs, what their relaxed heart state was also how they hear things you know, using lower and more muted tones for them. And when we brought Woody home and we played the music for him, he was literally went belly up and safety playing

that. Yeah, it's like, yeah. And we were able to condition him as well with this. So we would play it for him and rub him and you know, love on him. And then if we had to leave the house, we would, you know, play the mark him and he began to associate that music with with being loved and being taken care of. So and he always comes in here and I'm composing just lay on the ground and I know what he doesn't like. And he has his own musical tastes, you know, as well. That's so good. So healing, that's what this episode is about, is music can

be healing to your partners. And it can be healing to your pets. Yeah. I think people can probably hear him breathing though. That's a good sign. He's moving so loud. But he's breathing. What other conditions have you seen? Music, health? Yeah. I mean, in the world of memory and Alzheimer's and dementia, you know, music has had a really powerful impact for utilizing it for specific playlists of songs that that person used to enjoy pre-Alzheimer's or pre-dementia has been shown that it could actually connect them to those memories

where traditional language failed. The language of music helped them to reconnect to specific memories. And if you look on YouTube, if you type in Alzheimer's and Henry, you'll see an amazing video of a man that was actually pretty much non-aware before listening to the music. And when they put together a specific playlist of his preferred music, he literally came back to life and had an awakening. That's so cool. And, you know, as well as relaxing music and music that similar to what we're doing, Daniel, has been shown to decrease agitated behaviors in Alzheimer's patients. You know, I've also had testimonials for people who were using my music for going to sleep at night. Also, that's a challenge for people who have Alzheimer's and dementia, insomnia. And utilizing it for sleep helps create a calming and safe environment for them to get better sleep in the evening. So...

Music could boost self-confidence. When we come back, let's talk about music and emotional states. And I want to talk about this new idea I have on self-confidence. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're interested in coming to Amen Clinics, use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.