Change Your Brain Every Day - Smoking Marijuana is NOT Going Green!

Episode Date: April 24, 2017

In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana discuss the controversial issue of marijuana. Both sides of the issue have strong proponents who argue passionately to defend their stance, but what do the actual brain scans say? The results may surprise you.

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. Hey, everybody. So excited for you to be with us today. We are going to talk about one of the most controversial topics that just generates a lot of smoke. Yeah, I have to be honest. I'm not that excited to talk about this topic today. Yeah, it's kind of personal. So we're going to talk about the impact of marijuana on the brain. And so the first time I was offered pot, I was in 10th grade. And my best friend,

at least I thought it was my best friend, came with a bag that had green stuff in it. And he said, oh, we should do this together. And I'm like, no, I'm not okay with that. And for me, I just never really wanted to lose control. I'm one of the very few people my age, almost 63, that has actually never smoked pot and never done any drugs because I didn't want to lose control. Now, of course, I wouldn't do it because I wouldn't want it to damage my brain. Right. So mine's not nearly as rational as yours. Yours was a rational reaction. Mine's an emotional reaction. So for me, marijuana is probably not in the same category as heroin, but they all get lumped together for me

because drugs were a big part of our family history. Not my mom, thank God. But in our family, it was traumatic for me. And so probably the one really positive thing my uncle did in my life was create PTSD for me and anxiety around drugs. So badly that I still can't listen to seventies music. So like most seventies music. So you were a little girl in the early seventies.

Right. So you were born in 1968 at the beginning, really, well, maybe not the beginning, but in the middle of the drug culture, the drug revolution. Sex, love and rock and roll. Yes. drugs and rock yes sex drugs and rock and roll yes drugs and and rock and roll right and one of

your memories is of your uncle being murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. Right. And, and my uncle who was doing drugs would do any drugs. Okay. I mean, heroin was probably his first choice, but he smoked pot a lot and he did a lot of other, he drank, whatever. He did all sorts of drugs. So for me, that whole culture, they scared me. They literally looked like if there was anything that was like, we see all these zombie movies now, The Walking Dead, that's what they were to me. They weighed, my uncle weighed probably 95 pounds, maybe a hundred pounds, long greasy hair, you know, and his girlfriend was that or worse.

He OD'd twice. And so, yeah, it wasn't on pot that he OD'd to be fair. But for me, that trauma is, they're completely all lumped together. And I can't separate them. So even 70s music kind of freaks me out. But one of the reasons we're talking about this is we just published a study here at Amen Clinics on just about 1,000 people who smoked pot and then compared them to a healthy group. And every single area of the brain we looked at, 128 different areas of the brain,

were significantly lower in people who were smoking pot than in the healthy group, especially the right hippocampus, which is this seahorse-shaped structure in your brain that helps short-term memories get into long-term memory. And when the hippocampus is damaged, it's actually one of the first areas of the brain that dies in Alzheimer's disease. And with 26 states now have legalized it, 10 of them specifically have legalized it for dementia. We just have to go. That's a joke. We should at least talk about this. He's a lot more politically correct than I am.

Well, I'm actually glad it's legal because putting potheads in jail, how does that make sense? I agree with you because you don't want to. Well, put them in a cage. Right. Chronically stress them. You socialize them to a negative- Sleep deprive them. Give them terrible food and then let them hang out with people who do seriously bad things.

And then let them out. This is not smart. But in my mind, it's not smart to say, well, it's innocuous. Because when I started looking at scans in 1991, one of the first things I saw is that people who smoke pot had lower blood flow to their brain. Their brains had this sort of icky, toxic appearance and now does that mean it's bad for everyone i mean interesting question our father-in-law died last year of pancreatic cancer and that was the only thing that would actually alleviate his pain in his sit but he wasn't smoking and he was eating brownies and chocolate and whatever in a situation like that i'm all all for it. That was a medical use, a truly for real medical use. Not one of these, like, I'm going to find a way to get it for medical use. We have to touch on this idea that when you're smoking pot and you're involved in a culture

where it's affecting your life negatively, if you do have children or your families, you have to think about how it's impacting everybody, not just you and your brain. Well, and when we taught the Brain Warriors Way course, our 26-hour, 26-week course that's available for people, one of the great testimonials we got was from a young man who said, I haven't smoked pot now in three months

and i feel so much better and we just got another one we just got another one from a young woman who said the same thing and she didn't think she'd ever be able to not smoke pot because she thought she couldn't sleep without it and she has a very very very, very high stress job, very high stress. I mean, kind of crazy. So for her to be able to, where her hours are not regular, for her to be able to do the program and send us a message saying, wow, I'm sleeping better than I've ever slept, who would have known? And she's had people comment on how vibrant she now is. So there are other ways. There are other options. And I know sleep and relaxing and pain are big issues. So we'll talk about that. So my experience as a psychiatrist for a long time is smoking pot can significantly

decrease motivation, can decrease school performance, not for everybody, but for enough people, but also decreases anxiety and can decrease pain because it's decreasing overall activity in the brain. So if you start with high activity and you feel worried and anxious and panicky, yes, it can help short-term, but it can also cause long-term problems. So we just recently scanned someone who's actually really well-known as a supporter for pot, and his brain just looked awful. I have another friend who helped me with our NFL study. And he's always sending me articles on why pot is good for the brain. And when I met him up in the Northwest, he's like, you know, I've smoked it every day for the last 50 years.

And when I got a chance to scan him- It's like, you know, I've smoked it every day for the last 50 years. And when I got a chance to scan him. It's like we can tell. His brain looked awful. Correct. And so let us not say it's innocuous. It's not going green, as you like to say. It's not going green. But, and there's a new study out,

came out the same time my study came out from Norway, that if teenagers are smoking pot, it more than tripled their risk of becoming psychotic. Wow. And that's a problem. And that's actually a replication of another study. So pot is now a big industry in places like California where it's legal, in Colorado where recreational pot is legal. So it's a big industry. And as soon as someone like us says you need to be cautious, then all the haters come out. So we see it whenever we go a live chat. And our goal here on the Brain Warriors Way podcast is just to tell you the

truth as we see it through the lens of people that have looked at, I just found out today, 128,000 scans on people from all over the world. So it is... Your favorite verse, know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And the truth shall set you free. So if people are anxious or they can't sleep or they're in pain, when we come back, we're going to talk about alternatives to pot. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We have a special gift for you. It's an opportunity to win an evaluation at the Amen Clinics. All you have to do is subscribe

to this podcast, leave a review, and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics. All you have to do is subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics and the work we do, go to amenclinics.com. You can also learn about our nutraceutical products at brainmdhealth.com. Thanks for listening.