Change Your Brain Every Day - Suicide: What Is The Biological Cause?

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

If suicide goes against everything our bodies are wired for, then why do so many people opt to take this way out? In the first episode of “Suicide Awareness Week,” Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the surprising biological causes that can contribute to feelings of depression and hopelessness, as well as how to fight and prevent these causes.

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. We are so excited that you have joined us. We are going to talk about suicide over the next four podcasts. So we call this suicide week, not of course, you hurt yourself. How about suicide awareness week? Suicide awareness week. Yeah. But suicide is the 10th leading cause of death, but it's the one that perhaps is so emotionally impactful on everybody in your life.

But first, we have some reviews of the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I woke up this morning actually to this one. It's from a woman in Singapore. So the podcast is going around the world Jennifer Ng uh I've been listening to your podcast ever since I started assembled on the brain warriors way I go for an early morning six to nine kilometer walk and you're my favorite accompaniment I love that um your latest one with Colonel Jill Chambers and Michael Peterson literally left me in tears. My husband suffered from severe depression and other associated mental health issues for decades,

in addition to being severely overweight and just being physically sick. Don't you find that they often go together? The psychiatric treatments he has had over the years left him unlike the person I knew when we first met. It was like he had this massive, foul-smelling, and dense, dark brain fog that followed him perpetually. Whenever he got an episode, I'd just say that Dr. Doom's in the house. And yes, it's been incredibly stressful dealing with this. People often don't talk about the stress on the family of having, of living with someone who's anxious, angry, depressed, addicted.

Thankfully, a few years ago, he started to turn his life around through exercise eating clean and getting the right supplements until i heard colonel jill and her husband share their experiences i realized that my husband has been dealing with some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder that has never been treated um and then they wanted to say they wish they could come and get a spec scan. But until then, they're just so grateful for this information. What I like is that this is a good point. She says until they can, because they're coming from Singapore, just the flight is expensive. But she said until they can actually come to the US and do what they would like to do, which is get a SPECT scan, they're just doing everything that we talk

about, the whole program. That's what we want you to do. Do the program, right? So if you can't come in… Because that's also what we're going to tell you to do if you come to the even clinics. Right. Do the program. We're going to tell you every day is this good for my brain or bad for it? And you want to know. So do you have any experience with suicide in your life? Oh, dear Lord. Not so much in my immediate family,

but my stepmother in her side of the family. So I have two half sisters and my stepmother, she had, poor thing, her sister, her brother, and like five cousins. So she's had a lot. And so I saw that impact, you know, her and my dad, when I was young growing up and you know, the impact it had on that, the entire family. It was really hard. And I remember being around, it was really sad because her sister really liked me when

I was little. Like for some reason, she just took a liking to me. She was severely depressed, bipolar, and isolated herself in her room. And then she'd have moments of thinking she was someone else. It was interesting. I'm not exactly sure what all that was about, but I was pretty young and it could be really scary. But what I mostly remember was that she was always really kind to me.

Even when she was in a really bad state, she was always kind to me. And so it was so sad and just so horrifying. And to see this person not be able to come out of the room, she wouldn't bathe, she wouldn't do anything. And then one day, I just got the message that she had taken a gun and ended her life. Yeah. So it's completely against what we were made to do or what we have evolved to do, which is protect ourselves. So when people become hopeless or helpless or feel worthless, they're more likely to do something that hurts themselves. A study just came out today that having a head injury doubles the risk of suicide.

And I've known that for a long time, that traumatic brain injury is a major cause of depression and so few people actually know about it right so if we look at what could cause someone to feel so hopeless helpless worthless having a diagnosed mental health condition, especially depression, panic disorder, bipolar disorder, where you go between two poles, you can have really severe low lows and high highs. In those low periods, there's a high incidence of suicide. People who have ADHD have a higher incidence of suicide because of the impulsivity. There's actually a study from Washington State in Seattle that actually said 55% of the population in Seattle at some point in their life have had suicidal ideas. So having the ideas is not that abnormal. So you've got to wonder why Seattle isn't the weather.

Well, it's seasonal affective disorder, which means they go months without seeing much of the sun. So low vitamin D. And remember when we actually shot the cookbook in Seattle. I was only there for a week and I was going to walk you. In January. But it almost felt oppressive. Yeah, and I take vitamin D and I was like, oh my gosh, this isn't just rain, this is just gray. It was not that much fun. And so there's actually some,

there is evidence that the weather can play a role. So we've talked about mental health issues, including ADD. Weather can play a role. But most people think the highest incidence of suicide is December. But in fact, that's the lowest incidence. Interesting. December. You just feel like you want to die. Highest for heart attacks. Christmas Day. But the highest month is April. And my first thought, well, of course,

that's when you have to pay your taxes. You'd rather go to the other side than pay your taxes. But what's interesting is people have often had winter depressions where they've thought about suicide, but they didn't have the energy to do it. They were just too down to even do it. But as the sun came out for longer in April and they began to get the energy, they would do something that they have been thinking about. In the military, it's actually different. The highest months of suicide are July and January, which are the months of military moves. So when you move and you lose your connection to your tribe, you become more vulnerable.

And often on the show, when we talk about why things happen, we always talk about four circles. There's a biological circle, a psychological circle, a social circle, and a spiritual circle. So let's just dive into it a little bit, and then over the rest of the week, we'll talk about more. So the biological causes of suicide. So major mental health problems.

You described your stepmother's family loaded for depression and suicide. And so there's genetic causes. If you have family members that have done it, you are more vulnerable. That means you just have to take care of yourself more. We've talked about mental health issues. We've talked about traumatic brain injury. Now, I remember when you told me you had thyroid cancer. Oh, my gosh.

And even though you were not actively suicidal, you were sort of hoping. So, which is interesting, that ties into the spiritual and social. So the reason I don't think I was suicidal is because my religious beliefs really kept me from going to that other place. And also because of my mom. It was my mom. I knew my mom wouldn't survive it. So those connections are the only thing that really kept me from going there. I thought about dying. I actually thought how convenient it would be if

a truck just hit me, but I couldn't do it myself. So when your thyroid is low, you're more likely to have suicidal ideas. And then looking at some other biological causes, if you have high lead, high mercury, you're more likely to be depressed. If you've been exposed to mold and you have brain fog, you're more likely to be depressed and entertain suicidal ideas. If you have something like Lyme disease, and it goes into a concept Marty Seligman first pioneered. I love this concept from him. It's called learned helplessness. As you try to feel better and it doesn't work

and you try and it doesn't work and you try and it doesn't work and you try and it doesn't work and pretty soon you say to hell with it and you stop trying. So that's when you learn to be hopeless. You have to wonder why some people that happens and they give up and they have this learned helplessness and others just decide they're going to fight and it's almost like a, you know, I'm going to show you type of-

No matter what happens. No matter what. It's about a third of people. Isn't that interesting? And it's about a third of animals that no matter what happens to them, they have this level of resilience right um so biological and some medications can actually oh dear so i have to tell you about that one um so about probably 12 13 probably 13 years ago this is probably shortly before i met you um i went through something medical where I couldn't sleep,

and then they prescribed me some Ambien for about a week and said I could sleep at night. And I didn't think anything of it. I thought, oh, good, I get to sleep at night, right? So I took the Ambien the first night, and I woke up the next day feeling really wonky, like wonky just in the brain, just not right. I did not feel right. I felt down. I

felt tired, foggy, just didn't, I felt off my game completely, but I thought, okay, well, whatever. It's probably just whatever I was going through. I didn't really think much of it. Took the Ambien again the second night, woke up the next day crying uncontrollably. And if you'd have asked me why, no idea, no, no idea. I wasn't depressed that I know of, but suddenly I had zero control over my emotions. Like it was so crazy. So, I mean, I think there much all of the psychiatric medications have black box warnings saying this medication in vulnerable people may increase the risk of suicide. Now, are sleeping pills one of those that are particularly?

Like I've never, ever taken them again. Because if you have a sleepy brain and then they give you something to calm it down, it may in fact disinhibit your brain, making you more likely to have trouble. So as we continue Suicide Week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about some of the psychological causes of suicide and what you can do about it. Stay with us. 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,

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