Change Your Brain Every Day - Practical Tips For Coronavirus Prevention

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

With the increase of global panic over the spread of the coronavirus, many are left with uncertainty as to what they can do. One crucial measure to take is to shore up your immune system. In the second episode of a series on the reaction to pandemic, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you practical tips to strengthen your immune system today.

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 talking about coronavirus, how you can protect yourself, what you can do. And today we're going to talk about

how you can boost your immune system. But before we do, I want to read a testimonial we love when we do you leave reviews uh even ones when say you don't like us because it helps us bring you the content that you want to this podcast has been growing like crazy and yeah really for that um so when you leave a review, we enter you into drawing for a free book for Tana's Cookbooks. I suppose I should be signing The End of Mental Illness now and let them have a free drawing for that as well. So leave your preference on which book you want. From Melissa. Wait, you had cancer three times why don't people know who you are thank you for sharing your knowledge you and dr raymond so they're talking about tana you and

tan and dr raymond are so underrated the whole world should know this couple so please tell them we are looking we are hoping that you will share this information, share the podcast. And if you would, please post on social media or on our website, three questions, not three questions,

on our social media sites, a question about what you are fearful of about coronavirus or something that you've learned about it. Any question you have, really. How to boost your immune system, a question you have or something you've learned that you want to share. But post something.

What's on your mind? And we would love to hear more about it and we'd love to talk about it. We'll answer it during our question and answer section. Okay. So coronavirus, again, a common group of viruses that can cause infection in your nose, sinuses, throat. Some are mild and simply produce symptoms like the common cold, runny nose, sore throat, fever. Other types, as we talked about, are more severe. You may remember

SARS or MERS that killed hundreds of people. In early 2020, the World Health Organization identified a deadly new strain of the virus, the 2019 novel coronavirus or COVID-19, also referred to as the Wuhan, where it started coronavirus. So to date, it has infected, I think now and by the time this airs, it'll be more, 120,000 people worldwide. And there's been over 3,000 deaths. China, Italy, Iran have been hit particularly hard. It's transmitted from human to human, and symptoms appear within a couple of days up to 14 days from the time of exposure.

The symptoms, cold-like symptoms, shortness of breath, that seems to be one of the hallmarks of it, cough and fever. Most people, it's mild symptoms and then they recover. It's when your immune system is compromised that people can have the most problems. And it's one of the reasons every day I take 7,000 units of vitamin D. Me too. Because vitamin D helps to support your immune system.

So there are three big strategies I want to talk about. And then we have a lot of sort of sub strategies but during um a global epidemic like this you want to shore up your immune system one lower your stress freaking out about a pandemic raises stress which actually hurts your immune system making you more vulnerable to infections. Techniques that we talk about, such as diaphragmatic breathing, prayer, meditation, listening to calming music, warming your hands, hypnosis, guided imagery, all can be helpful. Yeah, I agree. So having a strategy for stress, and i think when um especially for people who travel a lot for work i would also throw in there think about which trips you might be able to

cancel sometimes you can't cancel your trips right but that stresses people out because when you're traveling a lot it automatically automatically increases your stress load. But canceling trips that you might, you canceled one. Because it just wasn't a necessary trip. You have trips that are necessary. So canceling the ones that are not necessary will decrease your stress load as well. Because when you travel, it also affects your sleep. And that will increase your stress load.

So I think that's really important. So working on your stress, eat foods that boost the immune system, foods that are a natural immunity booster, including onions, mushrooms. Garlic. Shiitake, white button, portobello mushrooms, garlic. So I'm thinking of a stir fry. You can also take aged garlic as a supplement. Some people just don't like garlic or they just can't handle that much garlic. So taking an aged garlic supplement can be helpful.

Vitamin C rich foods, oranges, berries, peppers, dark leafy greens. So now, again, I'm thinking of the stir fry, maybe coconut oil or avocado oil, peppers, dark leafy vegetables, mushrooms, onions, garlic. No, the garlic does not sound like a smoothie. No, no, no, but the green leafy vegetables and some berries. Yeah.

Vitamin D rich foods, fatty fish. So put some salmon in there, eggs, tuna, zinc rich foods, oysters, beef, lamb, spinach, asparagus, sesame and pumpkin seeds. And selenium rich foods like Brazil nuts, seeds, grass fed meats. So, I mean, I'm just thinking this. You have a smoothie for breakfast an immune boosting smoothie and that was my stir fry that was my day yesterday so yesterday we had i had a smoothie for breakfast just like we talked about with some berries and some greens in it and then for i was so busy for lunch i didn't have time to make much for lunch so i threw together a little wild salmon a can of wild salmon that comes from vital choice without it has no bpa in it and whatever um and threw it on a curry

coconut wrap oh so good um but just so simple and the curry in it is so so good for you so yeah pure wraps makes these amazing curry coconut wraps and stay tuned brain md is going to come out with a greens product that is spectacular, that we have been working on sourcing it. It's organic. It's loaded with immune-boosting nutrients coming soon. So we talked about lowering stress, foods that boost your immune system, and nutraceuticals that boost immunity to stave off infection so we've already referred to some of them omega-3 fatty acids vitamin d

only about 25 percent of the population has healthy vitamin d levels. We want you to get yours checked and optimized. Work with an integrative practitioner to determine other supplements, but those that enhance immunity, you mentioned aged garlic, therapeutic mushrooms, anthocyanins, these are extracts from fruits. Those are good for your eyes. So one thing that I want to talk about, though,

is that people often, like, they start to get sick and they start all of these supplements. That's not really the best way to do it. So you really want to, like, it's like you can't, like, start to get sick and then start taking vitamin C. Vitamin C doesn't really help get rid of a cold. It helps prevent a cold. It helps boost your immune system.

What we're talking about is helping you stay healthy. So there's a great analogy about rats in the street, right? So it's like if you put trash in the street, the rats come out. Well, it's like, were the rats always there or did the trash bring them out? Does that make sense? So you want to make sure you're like always boosting your immune system so the rats don't come out. Because the rats are always going to be around you but you don't want you don't want them to attract them by keeping your immune system boosted all the time you prevent that ability for them to actually be able to live and survive

so that's what we were trying to do so one thing that i want to talk about is you want to do this before you're sick yes rather you don't wait until you get sick so one of the things that that that we're not touching on excited about yes because i've been sick so one thing that you need to be thinking about is not just the things that like go after like immunity in the moment you want to be thinking inflammation you got to be decreasing inflammation like all the time because anytime your system you've got inflammation going on you are more likely to get sick so you've got to be thinking things like what we talk about all the time healing your gut all the time fish oil all the time well we haven't talked about gut but gut is so important keeping you well 60 percent of your immune tissue is in your gut. Yes. So probiotics can be really helpful,

but it's keeping your gut bugs happy. All the time. Yes. And so fish oil, so that you keep that inflammation down. So you want to be working on your, not just the immune enhancing supplements, but the inflammation and like decreasing supplements. Well, basically all of the-

And your gut. Right, mine's risk factor. Yes. Are good to strengthen your brain. All the time. And keep you healthy. So be smart. Don't travel when you don't have to.

If you're sick- Sleep. Work from home if you can. Protect yourself. Get rid of the automatic negative thoughts. Watch the news once for like a half an hour. And that's it. Turn it off.

Otherwise, it's going to damage your immune system. Comedies. We just saw Meet the Parents again. It's hysterical. We hope this is helpful to you. Stay with us. We're going to talk about Brain in the News next. And make sure you leave us your comments.

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