Change Your Brain Every Day - Suicide, Drugs, & High School Football: What’s the Connection?

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

Drug abuse and suicide amongst high school students has reached epidemic proportions in the last few years. Why is this? In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the possible causes for all this tragedy occurring in today’s youth.

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. Thank you so much for the podcast reviews. I love this one. I'm continually amazed how often I listen in and find an exact answer to a question or problem I am facing. Excellent resource and very on target. Thank you. Another one from Nico

83, healing my brain. I've known for a long time I've got something going on with my brain, don't we all? I've struggled with depression, anxiety, memory, weight loss. I'm so happy to have found this podcast. I feel like for the first time I found a group of people who look logically and scientifically at these issues holistically and consider one of the most important elements of our lives, our diet. I'm looking forward to hearing more and learning ways to improve my brain health and life with the smarts of Dr. Eamon, Tana, and their clan. Thank you all. Awesome.

Thank you so much. Today, there was an article recently in the paper on suicides, drug addiction, and high school football. And I'm like, these are three epidemic crises in the United States. Yes, football is an epidemic crisis. When they own a day of the week, it's a crisis. But Madison in southeastern Indiana, which apparently is a beautiful small city, is at the center of drug trafficking triangle connecting Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville. And it's really they're battling life and death problems. And a lot of the football players who get hurt, get opiates, then become addicted. And we know about the connection.

This is not like, it's not a unique thing, though. This is going on like so many places. We live in a very nice place. The drugs are out of control. We just had a football player at Chloe's high school commit suicide and leave three notes for, you know, one for teachers, one for students and one for his parents. Kids have access to so much now and it's, it's just, it's tragic. Well, and what we want them to have access to is healthy brains. And help. They need access to help and they need to know that they can get help and reach out for it if they need it.

So in brain health, we always talk about it's three things. It's brain envy. You got to care about it. So few people care. And the reason people don't care about their brains is you can't see it, right? You can see the wrinkles in your skin.

I'm not looking at you. Not doing that. Plenty there. You can see the wrinkles in your skin i'm not looking at you plenty there you can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly and you can do something when you're unhappy with it but because most people never look at their brains they don't think about it and because they don't think about it they don't care about it so the first thing so you saw your scan and I said you have the beautiful woman syndrome your brain was awesome I decided to keep but it wasn't perfect but it wasn't perfect so you just saw every flaw right I saw these little flaws magnified and then you wanted it

better right so that's brain envy you want a better brain so it's caring and then it's avoiding things that hurt it. And contact sports hurt the brain. There's no other way to say that. If you are getting hit in the head repeatedly. It should be fairly obvious. You go to jail if you shake a baby. Why is this hard? So can shaking a baby cause long-term brain damage? It can kill it. You can kill it. Or you can decrease its IQ.

Right. Right? So if you get hit by a linebacker that's 200 pounds. It's like shaken baby syndrome. It's like a shaken baby syndrome. And it's not just football. It's riding horses. You can fall off these big animals.

I mean, you can get hurt doing almost anything, but there are some sports where it's the goal. It's the goal is to like crash and smash and, you know. You can get hurt doing anything, but there are some sports where it's actually the goal. The goal. Right. Right. So I think we should be careful and I think we should be protecting kids way more than we do. And we've got to do a better job of educating them why drugs and alcohol, like it's not just about like, oh, we don't want you to not, we don't want you to, you know, not do drugs because of the morality issue. Yes. Okay. There's all of that involved. That isn't just the only issue.

We've got to be educating them about what it's doing to their development. Right, and most kids don't really get that their brain is not actually fully developed until they're 25. And if they go with the early drug use option, it's actually damaging. It's affecting their ability to get into the

college they want, to get the job they want, their employability. It's damaging and delaying their development. Right. So in the addiction world, we often say if you started using drugs when you were 15 and you didn't stop till you're 30, well, emotionally, you're still 15. But your brain has not fully developed. And the brain has windows where it will develop during a certain period. And then it won't develop after that. So early drug use can actually have lifelong negative implications. Well, and I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but I recently had been working with somebody who

had started using substances when she was about 12 or 13. And I'm telling you, like everyone that was working, you know, that was helping me was like, it's like trying to deal emotionally with a 12 or 13 year old. Now, fortunately with some help over time, that began, there began to be some emotional maturity that began to happen, but it was not easy in the beginning because you can't understand why this person can't think like everybody else. It's because that stunted growth, that stunted development. Right. And so educating people to that is really important because when you talk to kids, if

you actually teach them to fall in love with their brains, they're so much better at it. So if you take concussions, and she, this person we're talking about, had 19 car accidents. If you take concussions, mix it with drug addiction, you actually have a recipe for suicide. And I often tell my patients suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling or problem. So, and I want to, like, it's really important to leave a message of hope here. So this person had really hit, I mean, if there is a lower bottom than rock bottom,

had hit a lower bottom than rock bottom. And we worked with her. Basement bottom? Something like that. So it was really bad. And so in working with her, like really putting a lot of energy in and working with this person over about a year's time, what was really fun for me, just recently I spoke with her, like really putting a lot of energy in and working with this person over about a year's time. What was really fun for me, just recently I spoke with her and she not only is working now, has two jobs, is thriving.

Like, and then there were times where I actually questioned, is this going to happen? Are we going to be able to turn this thing around? And so all of a sudden it was so much fun for me. Just recently, she actually said to me, she said, said you know I was going through some of your materials and the same stuff that I couldn't comprehend a year ago she said I am blown away she goes I see where I was a year ago and I see where I am now and she was stunned and she's like I cannot believe both of us are stunned and we do this for a living right but it was just so cool there's a hope there there is hope and i don't know too many people who hit lower bottom than that and i talked to the 13 her 13 year old daughter and her eight year old daughter all the time about protecting

their brain and loving their brain when we first brought them down because we're helping to support them um we don't buy food it had to be all of it we did we did everything love that doesn't love you back right yeah so it's there's message of hope there it's really cool so if you want to be part of the solution you have to first love your brain and then teach other people how to love theirs. Share the Brain Warriors Way podcast with them too. Take care. Thanks. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. 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

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