Change Your Brain Every Day - The Brain in Love & Lust, Does It Damage Your Brain When You Lose Someone You Love?

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

Losing someone is hard, emotionally, but does it have any impact on your brain? That's what we're going to find out in today's episode. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Recently, my dog died and I've been really heartbroken or maybe I should say brain broken. And I'm wondering what happens to your brain when you lose someone you love, whether it's a spouse, a friend, or a pet? Oh, it's so sad. I just talked to a patient last week who had to put her dog to sleep, and she was so sad. And a lot of people don't get how important their animals are to them. I mean, we've been playing with Tinkerbell tonight. And your animals come to live in the nerve cell networks in your brain. And so they actually become part of who we are. And when they go away, they don't die in our brain. They still live. And I remember when Pollyanna died. Pollyanna was our Maltese. We had her for 11 years. So cute. And my daughter, Brianne, got depressed when Pollyanna died. She

had nightmares about Pollyanna. Every time she'd look where the dog's dish was supposed to be, she'd just start to cry. And it was as if she lost, you know, one of the most important people in her life, but it was one of the most important lives in her life because Pollyanna was still in her head. And it really wasn't until she got Madison, who turned out to be Pollyanna's brand niece, that Breanne started to sort of get to be more normal. But grief is such an important issue for us to deal with. And often when people go through a grieving process, they do terrible things for their brain. They start to drink too much because they can't sleep. They overeat. They, you know, do a lot of things that are not good for them. When

really one of the best ways to deal with grief is to face it. And there's often all the ants that go along with it. You know, if I did this, if I did that, then this wouldn't have happened. And, you know, they end up torturing themselves. And that totally just perpetuates it. I often say, welcome the feelings, sit with the feelings, cry, because crying in many ways is like a little seizure in the brain. When you cry, it really fires up your emotional brain, but then it can settle down and you can be okay.

And also make sure you engage in all those brain healthy things. And then you will open your heart to bring other animals or people to occupy those nerve cell networks in your brain. Thank you. You mentioned several factors that may influence the quality or how a relationship is, such as consumption of alcohol or drugs. You also mentioned factors such as how the parents of somebody may have behaved. Just a question that I had was, do genetics play a role in this as well? Genetics play a huge role. And we think maybe about 20%.

There are a lot of people who think genes are everything. And genes are not everything. But they're important. If you have a family history of ADD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, you are at higher risks to have problems. But fascinating study with bipolar disorder. Those people who had the genes for bipolar disorder, they had it in their family, who grew up in fairly healthy homes, had their first manic episode 10 years later than someone with that same genetic vulnerability who grew up like Will's family in a chaotic home. So your environment really matters. So, you know, how you protect yourself is you get on a brain healthy program. And with that, even if you're vulnerable to these issues, it can just make such

a huge difference. I wanted to know, casual marijuana use is so commonly accepted within the younger generation now, and it's becoming even more accepted now. I wanted to know how that affects your ability to even feel love and how it affects you in the long run. What I've seen on scans is many people smoke pot as a way to settle down their brains. So on the show, I talked about a woman who had obsessive compulsive disorder, had way too much activity in her brain. And people with that often will use marijuana or alcohol or painkillers, things that settle down brain activity in order to just feel more normal. The problem is, is they get stupid over time. I mean, we see it decreases function in their frontal lobe. So they're over time,

less thoughtful. It decreases their reaction time. So they get more head injuries from being in car accidents when they're high. It's not good for your brain. Marijuana is not good medicine. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show.

And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen Clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.