Change Your Brain Every Day - The Most Important Lesson from 125,000 Brains

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

Over the past 25 years Amen Clinics has built the world’s largest database of brain SPECT scans, totaling more than 125,000 scans on patients from 111 countries.  In this episode we will discuss the most important lesson learned, which is you are not stuck with the brain you have, you can make it better and we can prove it.

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.

Welcome back. What we're going to do today is talk about the most important lessons that we've learned from 125,000 brain spec scans that we've done at Amen Clinics over the last 25 years. I did a TED Talk on this three years ago that's got almost 3 million views. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, go see it. It's actually awesome. It'll make you cry. It's called The Most Important Lesson from 83,000 Scans, but we've done a lot more. And the most important lesson is scan whoever you're dating because i scanned tana about two and a half weeks after i met her and i went now this is a brain i can deal with yeah i always love your uh your way that you say whenever you uh are scanning someone or you know someone close to us you're like yeah but i can fix it it's like you you're Frankenstein or something. Dr. Frankenstein. That's true, yes.

So what are the most important things you've learned after looking at 125,000 scans? Well, the most important thing I've learned is that you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better and we can prove it. And we have over and over. And that's what we really love. And so we want to take a little bit of your time and actually teach you how to have a better brain and a better life. So I thought it was really funny when you told me one of the funniest things was that everything you've learned could be boiled down to a couple simple phrases. Tell me what they are.

Three words. Right. Care, stop, do. So all that education. 25 years of education that I've been able to boil down my whole professional career into three phrases. So brain envy. You got to care about your brain. Nobody cares about their brain. Why? Because you can't see it. 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 get to look at their brains, it's one of the few organs we actually don't

screen for trouble. You screen your colon, but isn't your brain more important? You screen your cervix, but isn't your brain really more important? Or as. You screen your heart. We're not telling you not to screen those things. We're just saying that your brain is your control center. So when I turned 50, my doctor wanted me to have a colonoscopy. You know, Dr. Lalonde, who's our family doctor. And I went, well, why don't you want to look at my brain?

Isn't the other end just as important? Right. But we don't do that. And because we don't look at the brain, we don't care about it, even though it controls everything you do and everything you are. Right. So the first thing is brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of most of your neuroses. It's because we don't care enough about the three pounds of fat between our ears. And when I first started scanning people in 1991, I scanned everybody I knew, including my mother, who had a stunningly beautiful brain. Yeah, her life reflects it. It totally does.

Even at 85, she's everybody's best friend. She's flexible. She's loving. She's awesome and amazing. She really is. And I was 37 at the time, and I scanned my brain, and it sort of looked like crap. I'm like, well, why does my brain look so bad? Because, I mean, you know me.

I don't drink. I've never done drugs, but I played football when I was in high school, and I'm smaller than most people, so I got hit a lot hard. And I had meningitis when I was a young soldier. And then I had a lot of bad brain habits. I was overweight, I wasn't sleeping, I thought I was special because I only needed four hours of sleep a night. Well, medical school will do that to you. I know being a resident is just somewhat toxic for your health, sadly. And most doctors don't get a lot of nutrition in school. You have to do that on your own if you care. So out of the thousands of hours, I got 16 hours of nutrition that actually causes half the illnesses I see. Right. right. Because it's all about medicine instead of prevention.

So we're going to help you focus on prevention. So I didn't care about my brain until I actually saw it. And then I went, my 60-year-old mother has a better looking brain than I did. That's not okay with me. I have brain envy. I want my brain to be as good as hers. So that's the first step in getting really well. And then when you saw your brain, you wanted it to be better, even though it was awesome. Yeah, but I'm really competitive.

You're right. So care, brain envy, stop. Avoid anything that hurts your brain. We'll talk about what some of those things are and do regular things that enhance your brain. So care, stop, do is the ultimate program for brain health success, which means your money will be better because you're making better decisions. Your body will be better because you're making better decisions. Your relationships will be better because you're making better decisions. Your relationships will be better because you're making better decisions. Right. And so what are the things to avoid? And you remember when I went to Chloe's class when she was in the second grade? Yeah.

It was fun. And I'm like, so let's list all the things that are bad for your brain. They totally got it. The kids totally got it. Right. So brain injuries, right? Playing football. Good or bad for your brain. They totally got it. The kids totally got it. Right. So brain injuries, right? Playing football. Good or bad for your brain.

Obviously, it's bad for your brain. Drugs or alcohol. Good or bad for your brain. Well, they went on the bad for your brain and they were right. Some things you might not know of. Obesity. Right. As your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down because fat cells

cause the release of inflammatory cytokines sort of a new idea though relatively new it is uh and it's sort of upset a lot of people because if we're not this isn't a judgment we love you it's not a judgment but fat cells are not innocuous they're there one of the jobs of fat cells is to hold toxins so um store toxins. And they produce inflammatory chemicals. If you don't sleep or you have sleep apnea, that damages your brain. Nicotine and higher levels of caffeine, diabetes, hypertension, low hormones, infections.

I mean, Lyme is just rampant in the United States now. And we've seen it cause some very serious problems. Cancer chemotherapy can be harmful. You know, as cancer chemotherapy kills cancer cells, it can also kill normal cells, the standard American diet, chronic stress, untreated things like ADD, anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar disorder, not exercising poor decisions, hanging out with unhealthy people, and not knowing about your own brain's vulnerabilities. Right. So you went through some of that stuff. We see this every day and we go through it sort of quickly, but really any untreated brain problem can really be a problem long term in your life. And that's really what we're trying to say.

And they're not always hard fixes, right? That's what we've seen is sometimes it's easier than you think. Now, that doesn't mean it's always going to be, right? Well, ultimately, we're going to give you the most simple question to ask yourself that is the gateway question to brain health. So stay with us. Coming in just a few minutes. So care, brain envy, Freud was wrong. Stop doing anything that hurts your brain and do engage in brain healthy habits. So in addition to the good decisions like we're talking about, as your brain gets better, you'll start making good decisions. One of my favorites is the idea of a positive peer group.

So when I found out that literally people are contagious, like studies have shown that happiness is spread through, you know, through your group, through the people you hang out with, through community, illness is spread through community, diabetes, obesity, they're all spread through community because people are influenced by people. I literally changed my peer group. It was that important to me. So it's just, you need to, you will become like the people you hang out with. They actually help determine your longevity. It's that important. So the fastest way to get healthy is to find the healthiest person you can stand and spend as much time around him or her as possible. That is so important. Obviously, clean water and clean air, being at a healthy

weight, focusing on sleep, making it a priority. I downloaded blue light blockers for my phone and for my computer because if you have light at night, it actually turns off the production of melatonin that tells you to go to sleep. New learning, the brain warriors way diet, getting rid of the ants. We're going to have a whole podcast on that. Learning how to manage stress, exercise and simple supplements, multiple vitamin fish oil, optimize your vitamin D level, and then supplements for your specific type. So as I hear this list, what I'm hearing really is the brain warriors way. This is our program is teaching people how to do this, teaching them mastery over their brain and body. That's what, that's what this is. Absolutely. So it's mindset

assessment, sustenance, the training and habits every day, essence turning pain into purpose, responsibility, which means sharing and doing it over years long. That's how you can grow your brain. How exciting is that? Rather than be a victim of aging, which shrinks your brain. So one of the things I like in martial arts is we do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training. And it's one of the things I love about the Brain Warriors way is that this is really a way of life where we train you. We're going to help you with that program.

We're going to help you get that black belt in health. And yeah, it may not be for everyone because it's we're going to help you get that black belt in health and yeah it may not be for everyone because it's for people who care it's for people who are serious well that's for people who are warriors right people who want to be serious about their health you know you and i often talk about if you want to lose 10 pounds and you're not really interested in your health go to jenny craig right we're just not, we're not going to lie to you. That's not, you know, I actually heard Oprah and she was like so excited about how people could have all these bad foods. And I'm like, you're not a warrior. You will

always have problems with your weight if you don't get your brain right. I'm in love with foods that love me back. So just tell about Andy. It's one of my favorite stories. He's a professor at the University of Michigan. He heard me speak there about ADD, and then he brought his daughter to our clinic in California. And so she wouldn't feel singled out. He decided to get himself scanned as well. And his brain just like awful. I'm like, Andy, what are you doing? He's like nothing. And he was about a hundred pounds overweight and he was drinking, never drunk, never in trouble for it. But every night he would have anywhere from four to six alcohol drinks a night. And when you, if you actually added up the extra calories just from that,

it's putting 40 pounds a year on his body. And it showed. And it showed in his brain. And his brain horrified him, which made me very happy because he didn't have enough anxiety. You like it when you scare people who need to be scared. He raised his anxiety. And he got on the program, was so diligent. And 10 years later, he called me up.

He said, I want another scan. And I'm like, why? He said, well, I lost 100 pounds. And I've exercised every single day for 1,743 days. I'm like, whoa. He was serious about it. And when we scanned him again, so I mean, he looked phenomenal. And his brain had literally aged backwards.

You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. So I promised everybody that simple question. What is the gateway question to brain health? And it's a question I've been asking Chloe since she was two. Yeah, so we told you how simple this is. Literally, it's so simple that our two-year-old started doing it many years ago. Daniel was doing this with her. We used to play the game together at the table. So, yeah, it's that easy. This is what we want you to think about. So I would look at her, and I'd say, let's call this Chloe's game.

And if you knew Chloe, she just had this huge smile. A little sassy. She's a little bit sassy. And she has red hair. I'm not sure what you mean by that. November 5th is actually National Redhead Day. I am not sure what you mean by that. Tana has red hair too. Anyways, I would look at her and I say, hey, want to play Chloe's game? And she'd always say yes. I would say,

is this good for your brain or bad for it? So if I'd say avocado, she'd say two thumbs up, God's butter. And then over time, as she learned about brain health, if I said blueberries, she'd put her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any other fruit. I'm saying, well, of course they're organic. And she'd go, well, they're God's candy. If I said playing football, she's like, oh no, brain is soft, skull is hard, skull has sharp bony ridges. Why would you ever do that?

If I said talking back to your redheaded mother, she'd go, oh, bad for your brain, way too much stress. That's the question. It's the gateway question to brain health. If you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? You'll start making good decisions and it'll make all the difference in the world for you. Why don't you head over to 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.