Change Your Brain Every Day - Red Dye #40: The Colorful Killer

Episode Date: August 17, 2017

In the same way that sugar can go by many different names, so too is red dye. Because it is identified in so many different ways, it can be difficult to locate on the list of ingredients. Studies have shown that red dye can be very detrimental to your health. Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana discuss this deadly ingredient and teach you how to find it in the items on your shopping list.

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. So today we're going to talk about red dye. What is it you said? They call it dye for a reason die yes are the reds coming to get you when i was in uh college i was taking a class on the soviet union and my professor he was an old guy and he was hysterical but he would

chant things and one of the things he'd always chant is better dead and then the whole class would go red oh wow that's pretty intense so let's start with a few things that um that contain red dye craft barbecue sauce lasagna hamburger helper del monte fruit salad nacho cheese doritos welch's frozen fruit bars duncan heinz home style vanilla frost vanilla frosting vanilla frosting ginger ale diet ginger ale lipton iced tea the instant iced tea maraschino cherries but what about things like tylenol and children's vitamins oh no it's incredible that red dye is in. It's not just red vines, although red vines has red dye. And I'm like, I'm a psychiatrist. Why do I care about red dye? Because it can cause all sorts of psychiatric issues.

And I had this boy I treated once who would just get negative, anxious, violent, aggressive. And the parents brought him to me. And, you know, one of the things I like to do with patients is put them on an elimination diet. It's like, well, let's eliminate things that potentially could be ruining your life. And off of red dye, his behavior went to normal, sweet, kind, helpful, which is nuts. And then we scanned him on red dye and his brain looked like an explosion. There was just like way too much activity going on. And then we scanned him off and it took on the pattern of a much more normal brain.

So haven't, I'm reading here, haven't those studies and that question been, that's been being raised since the seventies, correct? Yes. So they've been doing these studies and they have been trying, they have been linking actually erratic behavior, aggressive behavior, possibly hyperactivity to red dye for a long time. Right. And not just red. I mean, yellow also has been problematic, but it's the artificial food dyes, artificial colors and artificial preservatives that have been known to cause learning problems behavior problems mood problems in some people now it's not in everybody but if you're vulnerable to this you have to be super careful, which I always say, read the ingredients on labels.

And it's not just, so according to some of this research, it's not just the dye. So the dye has actually been shown to be harmful. And in some cases, because of course the FDA has approved it. And of course the companies making these products are saying there's nothing wrong with the dye.

Well, after doing studies, some of the problems have not been necessarily always linked to the dye, but some of the, the, um, chemicals in the dye. So that, that, you know, that's contained in the dye. So, um, here's, what's really, I thought was really interesting. Uh, food, the food industry dumps 15 million pounds of artificial dyes into your food every year over 40% of that is red dye number 40 so I thought that was really fascinating and then in 2011 even the FDA acknowledged the growing body of evidence that red dye is a problem that it's linked to erratic behavior but they didn't get rid of it

it's because in the united states if you have a problem you pay for it where in a country like the united kingdom if you have a problem everybody pays for it right and so the united kingdom actually took out artificial so did australia ityes and preservatives out of their food supply because they realized that it caused problems in some children. And it's not just children. I had a patient once who came to see us from Minnesota. And we scanned him and his brain was troubled and his marriage was on the rocks and he said I want you to do one more scan on me on MSG and I'm like on MSG because MSG is in

everything right and they often don't even label MSG it's called natural flavoring and and i said well why and he said whenever i get msg my temper becomes violent and so we scanned him on msg he had a big slug of it we then scanned him his brain turned into similar to the scans i've done of murderers that's crazy crazy. And so I showed him, you know, his regular scan and then his MSG scan. And I said, you have two choices. You could hold the MSG or I could actually put you on medicine to protect your temper. Now, in my head, I'm going, he's going to choose. choose well i'll just not eat anything with msg in it and he said it's too hard you don't know i want you to give me the medicine and i'm like why just what you said because i wouldn't want to go to jail because someone put msg in something

he said they don't even have to label it right Right. It's not fair. It's often labeled natural flavors. If I'm out at a restaurant and even if I ask and they get it and I explode, my wife said she's going to leave me. Right. And I can tell you if she leaves me, I'm going to get seriously depressed because I love her. And how unfair is that that things that are being put in our food that not everybody reacts to but there's a certain percentage of us that react negatively seriously chemicals and you know and i know some of you are like oh dr amen aren't you being dramatic? Because yeah, you hear the stories of people who come to the Amen clinics. It's dramatic and it's not necessary.

Not necessary. Because there's so many other ways to make foods taste great and foods that are clean for you. So you've made a couple of great points with patients that have pretty dramatic issues when they have red dye or MSG. And yet 43% of child-oriented products contain red dye. 43%. That's ridiculous. They want to make it red because red reminds them of red vines or Kool-Aid. And then red dye contains, red dye number 40 contains something called P,

it's a crescidine something like that which is um one of the one of the chemicals i was telling you about that's in red dye it's not the dye itself but it's in the red dye that's believed to be cancer causing so i thought that was pretty crazy and um and yet you know it's even though with all these petitions going around to take it out the fda still hasn't taken it out. We have other countries banning it and we still don't even necessarily label everything that has it. I mean, the very least we should be labeling it. No, and the food companies, I mean, I think you should put calories on everything because I think of calories like money.

But, you know, there are lobbyist groups that argue against labeling. And I mean, how crazy is that? If you don't know what's in something, don't eat it. Right. The more you eat natural foods rather than processed foods, the better they are for you. Because whatever goes in your body, I mean, it turns into you. Right. ever goes in your body i mean it turns into you right um and so if you're eating toxins or wearing toxins that's a whole podcast we could talk about absolutely and we did in our series uh on toxins

uh you just want to be very thoughtful about what you put in your body and what you allow in your children's bodies so read the labels go right natural and why go organic i get this question all the time oh i've read the studies organic doesn't matter it's the same nutritional value yes one is nutritional value the other is nutritional value plus poison right right i mean what do pesticides do they kill bugs what is inside your gut a hundred trillion bugs making vitamins neurotransmitters uh hormones helping you with detoxification it's uh it's critical to take care of your gut so there's one more point before we go because just like with sugar so we're telling them all these great tips there's one problem it doesn't say red dye number 40 always okay so even if it's on the

ingredients just like sugar that's the thing you have to know actually what to look for so just like with sugar which can have about 14 different names red dye can have a bunch of different names um how about allura red red 40 red number 40 fd and c red number 40 allura red ac that's a tricky one allura red ac allura that sort of sounds like a date right it. It kind of doesn't sound bad, right? It sounds benign. How about C-I-1-6-0-3-5? Yeah. Anything that says that on a label. Avoid. Pass. And then C-I-Food Red 1-7. So those are a few names that are really going to throw you for a loop because how would you know, right? They get tricky, just like putting MSG as natural flavoring. What does our friend Mark Hyman say? If it grows on a plant, eat it.

If it's made in a plant. If it's made in a plant, don't eat it. Right. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food and she can't pronounce it, there you go. Right? There you go. All right. Love you.

Thanks for watching. There you go. All right. Love you. Thanks for watching. See you soon. 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. Thank you. Thank you.