Change Your Brain Every Day - Pain Relievers: Ones to Choose & Lose

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

A recent study has linked Acetaminophen (Tylenol) with autism in babies when taken during pregnancy. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss which pain relievers are the safest and have the least side effects, and which ones should be avoided.

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. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. We're so glad you're on this journey with us. We love being your guide on the Brain Warriors way. So many testimonials from people who are readers and listeners. One, this is a great eye-opener. I've taken down some notes that I feel that will help

me. Thanks. This is an amazing podcast. Or this one, I just discovered your work this past week. I have been consuming all your information and ordered your books. ADD runs so strong in my family with alcoholism and drug abuse. I only wish I had discovered you years before when my kids were younger. I am on my way to a healthier brain because of your work. Thanks so much for all of your work and sharing. Well, that's why we do this. You know, we've just learned so much great information here at Amen Clinics,

helping people have better brains and better lives. And we want you to be one of them. Now, this podcast is gonna be a little different, but it's based on a research study that came out recently on acetaminophen or Tylenol and autism. Now I've stayed away from acetaminophen for a number of years. Yeah, you told me that. Because when I wrote my book, Preventing Alzheimer's, with Rod Shankle, we found that people who use Tylenol on a regular basis got Alzheimer's disease two and a half years earlier than the general population.

And people who used Advil as their pain medication actually got Alzheimer's disease two and a half years later. So why is that? Than the general population. Well, being a nurse who worked in a hospital, you know one of the most devastating kinds of overdoses is Tylenol. Because of the liver. Because it damages your liver. So if you take something on a regular basis that damages your liver, what happens is your body doesn't properly detoxify itself and toxins build up.

So let me read the study. So it's the most commonly used pain and fever medication during pregnancy. Previously, a positive ecological correlation between acetaminophen use and autistic spectrum disorders was reported, but evidence from larger studies based on prospective data, that means looking at it in the future, not the past, was lacking. So they followed 64,322 children and mothers enrolled in the Danish national birth cohort from 1996 to 2002. So the Danes and the Finns are actually really great, Swedes too, at keeping health data on their populations. So they checked for an average of 12.7 years to investigate whether acetaminophen use in pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of autistic spectrum disorders in the

offspring. The information on acetaminophen use was collected prospectively from three computer-assisted telephone interviews. They used records from the Danish hospital and psychiatric registries to identify the diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorders. At the end of follow-up, so of the 64,000 kids a thousand twenty seven were diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders they found that 31% of kids were also

hyperactive more than 50% of women reported ever using acetaminophen in pregnancy and what they found the women who use of women reported ever using acetaminophen in pregnancy. And what they found, the women who used acetaminophen had a significantly higher number of autistic spectral hits. Oh, interesting. So I'm gonna push back for one second because that makes sense and it's very interesting. But when you said, when you talked about Alzheimer's

with acetaminophen versus Advil or ibuprofen. The only thing I wanted to point out there is that we also know that that decreases gut bacteria, which is bad for your brain and can long-term increase inflammation, which is also bad for your brain. So we've got to be paying attention sort of to all of it and how much you use. Now, we're all grateful for medication when you need it. Just be careful about chronic use of any of these, right? Because they have side effects. So, you know, if you need to take it, take it when you need to take it, but just know that there are side effects to chronically using a lot of things. Well, and we're not huge fans of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories because they can really affect your gut.

I just said that. In a negative way. Yeah, no, I heard that. But it's also an anti-inflammatory. Right. So the anti-inflammatory. So if I had a choice, which one would I take? I'd take the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. And like I saw a woman last week who has the periods from hell where she cramps, she bleeds, she's in a lot of pain, and she uses a fair amount of Advil. Would I rather, especially because she wants to get pregnant, would I rather have her take Advil or Tylenol?

And I'd rather have her take Advil and take probiotics along with it to help rebuild her gut, but then also find out, well, why do you have heavy periods? Maybe it's because she has estrogen dominance. Or fibroid tumors. But just be aware that long-term, it'll actually increase inflammation if you break down your gut barrier, because that's what can happen. Well, I think this is just so important to be thinking about why the rise in autism. So when I was a Child's Country Fellow from 1985 to 1987, we hardly talked about this issue.

You know, it was like 1 in 10,000 kids. And even though Asperger's syndrome, which is one of the autistic spectrum disorders, was described in 1943, there just weren't that many. But beginning in the early 90s, it began to skyrocket. Right. And some people think it's associated with vaccines the the evidence not clear on that at all it's not clear that it's not so that's important but i think it's a gene toxin epigenetic interaction so that there's some toxin in the environment that is turning on these genes that make people vulnerable to autism. And a number of my very learned friends think it's acetaminophen.

Is that, remember, well you may not remember, but in the 80, there was something called Rye syndrome that happened from aspirin. Right. So they stopped giving children aspirin. And they started giving. And they started giving them acetaminophen. And we saw this significant rise. Now, I know it's more complicated than that. But according to some studies, this increases the risk by as much as 40 or 60%.

Wow, that's huge. It's huge. And I'm sure it's not the only answer. I think it's also kids who live around toxic dumps have a higher incidence of autism. We are, and you and I knew this when I was writing Memory Rescue, and I was doing the toxin chapter and I had you download this app Think Dirty and had you scan all of your personal products. Think Dirty is an app that lets you scan your personal products to see what are the endocrine disruptors in it, the toxins in it. So is this primarily for pregnant women taking Advil or could it also apply to young

children taking Tylenol? Or can it also apply to if you give your children, young children Tylenol, can it do something at that point? I think it's mostly pregnant women is the study we're actually talking about. When the fetus develop. But anything that disrupts liver function or gut health, we have to be thinking of other things to do. Right. So that, and one of the things I've never understood, ever,

especially when we've got, you know, a society of kids who have such terrible ADD and other problems, why are we putting red dye in all of their children's medicines? What is that? So it's pretty. That's the dumbest thing. So it tastes like cherry, although the taste has nothing to do with the red dye. It is so dumb.

You know, that's a whole other thing, the artificial flavoring. Well, and we have to be serious about this. Having treated so many children who have autism, it devastates families. Oh, it does. It devastates families. There's a high incidence of divorce because I just finished reading a book. It was actually a novel. So it's fictional, but she pegged what happens in an autistic family.

The book is called House Rules by Jodi Picoult. And it's a wonderful book if you want to learn about the emotional impact of autism. And TACA is a great organization. Talk about curing autism. TACA. She's amazing. Her story is amazing. TACA-C-A, talkanow.org. But we want you to be thinking about, if you're thinking of having babies, don't use Tylenol.

And make sure your body is as clean as possible. One of the things I said this week in the lecture that a number of people came up to me was about epigenetics and how your habits turn on or off certain genes that make illness more or less likely in you, but also they affect your eggs and your sperm. So in you, but also in generations of you. My daughter, Caitlin, our daughter, Caitlin, is pregnant with her third child, and this time it's a girl, and everybody's excited, and we're getting ready for the shower. But when Haven is born, Haven will be born with all of the eggs she'll ever have. And so Caitlin's behavior is impacting Haven's health, but also Haven's baby's health.

So there's a whole area based on that of medicine that I think is just fantastic. And it's just growing like crazy. It's preconception medicine. So rather than, because, you know, sadly, as you know, there should be a warning label on bottles of tequila may cause pregnancy. So it's just the way it goes for so many women. They find out that they're pregnant after, you know, partying, or they've been partying, or they've been out on vacation and drinking, and they find out they're pregnant, and they've been drinking, right? They've not been thinking about pregnancy.

And then all of a sudden they clean up. Now that's good. We want you to clean up whatever you've been doing if you get pregnant all of a sudden. But what really what a lot of people are beginning to realize is it's really a better idea if you really get clean before you actually think about getting pregnant. So clean your body up, really get yourself- Like for six months. Or a year.

So what preconception medicine does... But so many babies are not planned. Right. So what preconception medicine does, because infertility is just out of control now. It's out of control. What preconception medicine does is helps women start thinking about, when do I really want to have a baby? Or for women who really know they want to have a baby, let's actually plan this out. And then they also help women start thinking about

this whole fertility issue, but really cleaning up the body so that before you go on this whole road down infertility, let's get everything else cleaned up first. Because maybe there's other issues. So before we stop, let's just give them sort of like our top five tips so you know number one is avoid a seed of benefit it's likely disrupting your liver and there's a possibility it could increase the risk of developmental disorders in children right so so that would be one. What's another one? Well, avoid alcohol, but like I said, I would actually find a preconception medicine doctor

and really get your numbers checked. Make your body this beautiful, wonderful place for a baby to grow. And we actually have a new smart prenatal to help support many of the systems in your body. We're pretty excited about that. It's being very intentional with your body. So avoiding anything that hurts it, doing things that help it. I would also make sure the omega-3 fatty acid level in your body is really good. There's a number of research studies correlating omega-3s.

No, it's not part of a prenatal vitamin. You need a prenatal vitamin and omega-3 fatty acids higher in DHA and EPA. It's not part of our prenatals either? No, because it's hard to get the fish oil into capsules. That's just very hard to do. So they're separate, yeah. So they are separate. And then put together a stress management practice for yourself.

For sure. A simple one, whether it's meditation, hypnosis, diaphragmatic breathing. There's actually maternity yoga, which is awesome for women to help just like learn how to breathe and learn how to stretch and just get your mind right. Because as we don't want you putting toxic substances in your body like alcohol and perhaps acetaminophen, we also don't want you having toxic thoughts because toxic thoughts actually will trigger a cascade of toxic chemicals in your brain and it happens almost immediately. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com.

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