Change Your Brain Every Day - Opioids & Mental Health in America: What To Know

Episode Date: November 29, 2017

Dr. Daniel Amen’s recent visit to the White House to discuss our country’s opioid epidemic raised plenty of questions about how addiction can be treated or prevented. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the current state of heroin use, the most current and effective methods for treating this deadly addiction, and strategies to keep your children from exposing themselves to opiates.

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 to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the opiate crisis in the United States. But before we start, I want to read a quick testimonial. It's really awesome. It's titled Pure Gold, and it's from David Walker in the United Kingdom. But before we start, I want to read a quick testimonial. It's really awesome. It's titled Pure Gold, and it's from David Walker in the United Kingdom. I love this. We have people

from all over the world listening to our podcast. It's so cool. I just saw someone in the clinic last week from Hong Kong. I know, yeah. The week before, somebody from Uzbekistan. So cool. And it's like, how did you find us? And he watched my TED Talk in Uzbekistan. So this is what David Walker says. Just discovered this podcast. It doesn't just contain golden nuggets of information. Every episode I have listened to is pure gold. Absolutely love it.

Dr. Amen and Tana Amen take what's already a fascinating subject and fill it with practical advice, which you can act on immediately to improve the health and function of your brain. Love that. Pure gold. Pure gold. All right. Today, we're going to talk about the opiate crisis in America. I was just at the White House, and that was a major topic of conversation. Every day, more than 90 million Americans die after overdosing on opiates. 90 Americans die every day. The misuse and addiction to opiates, including prescription pain relievers,

heroin, synthetic opiates, such as fentanyl, methadone. Methadone, which is used to help people get off of heroin. Yeah, it's actually used to keep them addicted, but they're not committing crimes.

It's a travesty. They're not committing their drugs. During 2016, there were 52,000 overdose deaths in the United States. It's actually tracking to almost 60,000 overdose deaths in the United States. It's actually tracking to almost 60,000 this year, including 33,000 involved opiates. There's an average. So the number of opiate prescriptions dispensed by doctors

steadily increased from 112 million prescriptions in 1992 to 282 million in 2012. I'm not without words very often, but whenever we start talking about this subject, I find myself like my stomach tightens up. Why? Because this is very personal to my family. So besides an uncle who overdosed twice and almost died and then did prison time for it, and my other uncle was murdered because of a drug deal gone wrong, and he wasn't even a drug addict. It was because of that uncle who was a heroin addict. And then it's with other family members as well

who I don't want to mention because they would not probably want me to. But it was just something that was rampant and it's hard and i grew up sort of hating it you could drop the sort of i guess and didn't you say that when we were watching once the walking dead that's what it reminded me of i knew what zombies were before i ever saw movies about zombies because that's exactly what a heroin addict looks like but your uncle that was a heroin addict is actually doing much better oh he's no he actually went on after he went to prison and came out he it's somehow there was one great counselor he worked with. One person can turn it around for

someone. And that's the really cool part. He went on to then become a counselor and did counseling with prisoners. So when I was at the white house, I heard about, you know, all the medications we can use to treat opiate addictions and the drug treatment programs. And I was a huge fan of many of the things they talked about. But during the listening session, I raised my hand and I'm like, we're not talking about prevention. The most important thing we can do is prevent people from getting started. And I can honestly say that's the one gift my uncle gave me. Right. No, I'm not kidding. I've often told him, you gave me the best gift because when all my

friends started experimenting and doing cocaine and even messing around with heroin and things, drugs are crazy. And this is just a word of wisdom to parents. They start way before you think they do. We've got teenagers. They start way before you think they do in school. Usually around seventh grade is when it's starting to open up. So usually it's pot and alcohol. And then before you know it, eighth grade, ninth grade, it's full blown. So parents are always like, what?

And I'm like, we're very close to you know all of our kids and it's just a reality that's the reality so all right so how from the amen clinics how would we approach this crisis so heavy emphasis on prevention we have a high school course that we actually give away for free brain thrive by 25 It's 12 weeks or 12 hours, meaning you can do it in a weekend. But we teach kids. And you can't just go, oh, drugs are bad, don't do them. Because what's the task of adolescence?

It's independence and identity. It's to break free from you. It's to break free from you. So if you say no, that means yes. yes. So you have to turn it on its head and go, your brain controls everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. When your brain works right, you work right. When your brain is troubled, you have trouble in your life. It's your brain that gets you a date, that gets you into college, that gets you freedom and independence because you act trustworthy.

It's your brain. Here are the things that help your brain, and here are the things that hurt your brain. So one of the things that I thought was brilliant on our part, if I must say so myself, was that we actually, because this was on my mind a lot. I know it starts in seventh grade. And so that's their friends are beginning to influence them more than their parents are. And so we had Chloe do the course, this new one. We had our teenager do the course. She helped me with it. She helped create it. And so she was sort of forced into hearing all of this information and it was really great

for her. She's a good kid anyways by nature, but it was good for her to hear it and to be a part of it. So that was our sneaky agenda. A sneaky way, a sneaky agenda. And then I'm, you know, because I'm a nurse and I worked in a trauma unit, there was a lot of the accidents are drug related. I went a little bit further and we've always done the education and you're fantastic with that. I'm a little more scared straight kind of thing. And I would always done the education and you're fantastic with that. I'm a little more scared straight kind of thing. And I would always just tell her, sweetie, I love you. And if you, you know, I know I can't control you any longer. I know you can go out and do what you're going to do. And it will make me so sad. If you make adult decisions that mean you have to pay adult

consequences that I can't rescue you from no matter how much I want to. And I'd pull up pictures and I would introduce her to people who had made bad decisions, whose lives were ruined. So giving them accurate information. But in the course, when we go through this stuff to avoid, you know, drugs, alcohol, headbanging, bad food, not sleeping,ariably, and it's always a boy, will raise his hand and go, how can you have any fun? And you actually came to my lecture at the University of Massachusetts when I spoke to 7,000 children and their parents. And these are bright kids, kids who want to go to medical school. Really bright. They're not normal right there these kids are crazy bright and so i did this you know things to avoid and then i say you know invariably a teenage boy will raise his hand and go well how can you have any fun and then we play the game

with the kids who has more fun the kids with the good brain or the kids with the bad this was really funny who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he doesn't act like a jerk. And the girl behind me screamed out. She yells, preach it, brother. So the girls were, it was a really fun crowd. And what was really fun for me is exposing your kids to that kind of environment is really cool too, because Chloe looked at me. She's like, who are these kids?

I've never seen kids who are this kind of achiever. She's like, is there anything these kids can't do? And I'm like, sweetie, these kids, it's not that they were all born geniuses. They work hard. Yes, they're smart, but they work really hard. They're focused. They know what they want.

Well, and then I asked them, so who gets into the college they want to get into? The kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? Who gets the best jobs, makes the most money, takes the coolest vacations. And then I actually had permission from my friend Miley Cyrus. And Miley's made some decisions

that really made me unhappy. They were entertaining. They made me unhappy. And right before, while I was preparing the lecture, I text her the same question. Are you having more? Well, let me back up a little bit. So in December, Amen Clinics published the world's largest study on marijuana users. So over a thousand marijuana users, we compared their brains to healthy brains, non-marijuana using brains. And we found every area of their brain was lower in blood flow. And so I text her the study.

And she texts me back. She said, no way. And I text her back, way. And she stopped. And so now it's five months later where she's not smoked pot or done anything else and so i'm getting ready for the lecture and i email i text her are you having more fun with your good habits or the bad ones and she texts me right back she goes good, by a billion, which I was so happy for her. And so I got to share that story with the kids, and they all roared approval. So you have to educate. Prevention is the most important thing you can do. But if you get stuck in the rabbit hole of addiction, there is help. And I'm not a

fan of heroin. I mean, I understand the reasons why. I'm so glad to hear that. But I'm also not a fan of methadone because it just perpetuates the addiction. I am a fan of acupuncture because acupuncture works by increasing endorphins in your brain. And opiates work on the endorphin system and they make you feel good. But you have to be really careful with anything that works on that system because the more you push on it, the number it gets, and then it causes you to need more and more to get the same result. So three ways, I talked about this, that people change. They have an epiphany. So we produce a drug education poster called Which Brain Do You Want? Healthy brains surrounded by drug-affected brains. And the whole point of that brain, the poster, is an epiphany. And it increases the discussion.

The second thing is you have to change your friends. If you hang out with drug addicts, you're going to be a drug addict. You saw that with your uncle, right? And somebody else we helped over this last year. You've got to change your friends. The more you're around people who do the right things, the more likely you are to do the right things. And there are so many natural ways to deal with pain. So hypnosis, meditation, omega-3 fatty acids. In our NFL study that we did

here, there are a lot of people on chronic pain medications. I remember one of my patients, my first evaluation, he rolled off the couch. I mean, he was just spaced out. And getting him well ultimately meant getting him off the opiates. Well, and people don't—we underestimate the power of food and things like alcohol where, when pain, where pain is concerned. A lot of people do drink and do do drugs because of their pain, but they're eating really poorly. And what you don't realize is it's a vicious circle because when you drink alcohol, especially in excess, if you're just having a glass of wine,

not so much like once in a while. Um. But when people drink every day or they are eating inflammation-causing foods, inflammation increases pain. So if you're eating bad food, I know myself. Like when we go on vacation, we travel. If I eat certain foods and I don't know what's in the food like I normally do and I'm not controlling it the same way and I'm dehydrated, I have pain. I have pain from old karate injuries, things like that. Well, when we did the Brain Warriors Way class,

you can sign up for the Brain Warriors Way class. It's Tana and I for 26 hours. It took us six months to create. Of the 20,000 people who signed up for our class, pain was huge. Decreases in pain just by getting on the right diet was really important. It's not magic. It's a decrease in inflammation. huge decreases in pain just by getting on the right diet. Right. Was really important.

It's not magic. It's a decrease in inflammation. It's that simple. You are so smart. I know. Thank you. I married you. I must be such a critical issue. Starts with prevention and then epiphany, change your friends,

and then diet can be hugely important. But you know what happens? One beef and then we'll wrap this up, is they go to drug treatment programs. And they feed them garbage. Unbelievable. I know. I worked for them, remember?

We're going to talk about that. Part of it is because the leaders are all addicted to garbage food. Right. The brain hates change. And I remember my first AA meetings when I went as a student, when I was a psychiatry resident and learned how to treat addictions. They were all smoking, drinking coffee with cream and sugar, lots of sugar, and eating donuts. And I'm thinking to myself, no one's getting well.

I mean, you're not drinking anymore, but you're clearly not getting a healthy brain. Diet is critical and often a significant missing piece. Stay with us. You can beat this. 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.