Change Your Brain Every Day - The Types of Trauma that Can Result from a Car Accident

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Every time you get behind the wheel and strap on your seatbelt there lies the possibility of disaster occurring, and the subsequent trauma that can result from being involved in an auto accident exists in many different forms. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen share some of the various ways auto accidents can leave long term effects of trauma on the brain, as well as some of the things you can do to put your brain in a healing environment.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. Thanks for being with us on driving week, driving and the brain week. We've talked about young drivers and how important it is to be thoughtful and careful with them.

Also, along that line, they need to be in safe vehicles. Yes, for sure. So let's chat about that for a little bit. We talked about older drivers and what to do when you're concerned. In this podcast, we're going to talk about other drivers. Right. talk about other drivers and also give you some techniques on how you can take care of your brain and calm yourself when that may not be your strength. I actually have a funny tip on this one. So think about what you can learn in this podcast. Pay attention that how it affects you you know do you have a funny story or a powerful story you can share with us you can also enter uh the raffle for the drawing

for uh one of our free books the brain warriors way cookbook that tana will sign for you. You do that by leaving a question, a comment, or a review at brainwarriorswaypodcast.com or leaving it on iTunes. And one thing I would encourage you guys to leave as well besides your questions and comments is think about there's so many people who have been traumatized. This is something we just hear so much about. I mean, our friends who have lost children from motor vehicle accidents. I have a sister who was in 19 car accidents. So my nieces have had trouble with that. I certainly was traumatized by people in my family driving either while intoxicated or certain circumstances. Falling asleep. Yeah, falling asleep at the wheel. And as a trauma nurse, I saw it all the time, different situations that would occur in cars.

Some of them were just crazy accidents, just bizarre accidents. So think about if you know someone or you've been in a situation that you were really traumatized, you can send us, you know, a question or a concern you've had about that. We would love to hear from you. So think about that during this episode. So I want to read a testimonial. Today I found out my iPhone had your podcasts. I heard about the podcasts and by accident I found them. Now I'm going to be addicted to listening to Dr. Amen and Tana's interesting podcasts.

Thank you for trying to make us all healthy. By Dr. Donald. Thank you. So I love addicted to good things. So I had a session today with one of my favorite patients, and she was talking about cheap hits of happy versus great hits of happy. Oh, I like that. So I taught her about dopamine, the basal ganglia,

where cocaine works in the brain. But as she's getting healthy, she's beginning to notice what really wears out her pleasure centers, what gives her cheap hits of happiness. So think cocaine. Right. But also think television. Yeah television and marijuana and alcohol, gossiping, social media, shopping, sex with the wrong people. And she goes, great hits of

happiness, time with people who lift me up, being with healthy people, reading, learning, people reading learning talking to smart people um exercise traveling so she's beginning and we plant these words i want you to have in your head does it fit does it fit does what i'm going to do now is what i'm going to do now does it fit with the goals I have for my life? And so I just wanted to share this with our Brain Warriors audience. Are you going after cheap thrills or thrills that actually make you thrilled for the long run? And that's our goal with you. All right. Back to driving. And we only have about 10 minutes left to talk about driving. And I remember when I met you, and I've told this story before, but I really liked you. After our first lunch- They're probably tired of hearing about it. I really liked you. But I had to see your brain because I didn't want to like you if you had a

troubled brain. And so about two and a half weeks after we met, I invited you to the clinic. I said, hey, you haven't seen the clinic yet. Do you want to see the clinic? And you came and I offered you a scan and you took it because you really wanted to learn more about our work. And you had a beautiful brain. I mean, obviously you're still here and you can tolerate me. But it was really clear on the left side that it had been hurt. And I'm like, did you ever have a head injury? And you looked at me like I was the craziest SOB on the planet.

I was a neurosurgical ICU nurse. And you went, no. And I went, are you sure? And she said, I don't think so. I said, have you ever fallen out of a tree, fell off a fence, dove into a shallow pool? No, no, no. Have you ever been in a car accident? No.

And then you stopped. But I still didn't think it counted because I didn't lose consciousness. Right. But tell everybody what happened. So my sister fell asleep at the wheel going 75 miles an hour and she rolled two and a half times and my head, thank God I was laying back, but my head hit the center console. But I walked away, so I felt so grateful that I thought it was all fine. Except your brain is the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard with multiple sharp bony ridges. So imagine this brain, your brain, beautiful brain, soft in a hard skull with sharp bony ridges going 75 miles an hour. And all of a sudden she goes off the road, the car flips two and a half times and then stops.

And skids. What do you think is going on inside your skull? It's like shaken baby syndrome. Shaken baby syndrome. And even though you might notice it right away, it puts you at risk for depression later on, for irritability, for having more trouble dealing with stupid people on the road. That is one of my issues. I have trouble dealing with stupid people on the road. Thank God I have enough forethought that I keep it inside the car. I don't use hand gestures, but it annoys me.

And another secret is did you know that sleepy drivers cause more deaths than drunk drivers? I do. And so if you didn't get a good night's sleep, you should have somebody else drive you or take Uber. But there really should be an app on how much sleep the Uber driver got. I agree. You know, that's one of the reasons I quit working nights as a nurse, because I found myself falling asleep driving home. I'm like, nope, done. Between that and eating bad food to stay awake all night, I'm like, I can't do, this is just killing me, literally killing me. So. Okay. So when you get in the car, be aware that's one of the most important things

to do. And one of the things we said we were going to talk about was drivers in your family, not the very, very young and not the very, very old, but have you been traumatized by a situation, whether it's yourself, maybe you've had a DUI, maybe you were hit by someone. But do you have a situation in your family that's traumatized you? So we have a situation, someone in our family who we have been helping, who does not have a good driving record and is now thinking about getting a license again and wants us to help. And this person had a DUI and totaled a car after we helped with that car. And so, and I have a lot of trauma around that. I have a lot of, a lot of past history and trauma around it.

So at first I just felt like my automatic reaction, which is frequently this way when I'm under stress, no, like we're not doing this and not going to do this again. But that's not the most helpful thing, right? So we talked a lot about it and I, the solution that we came up with and that I, that I really thought would be the best, um, was for us to do some EMDR together. So you're going to get therapy together. Yes. Some EMDR therapy too, because I have trauma around her driving and I have trauma around

her putting her kids in the car and her putting her kids in the car. And her being in the car. And I won't help with that until, I'm not going to contribute to that until I have dealt with that trauma with her. So it's very much like the 15 and a half year old. Is that you don't really get to drive until emotionally you show the responsibility of an adult. Yes. And my gift to her is going to be defensive driving lessons. She has to show that she can do that. Yeah.

That's very thoughtful. All right. So before we run out of time, tips. When you're in the car, first thing is decrease the distractions. Mm-hmm. Because you don't know the health of the brains around you. And I did a study on normal and here's my criteria for normal, no psychiatric illness, none in your family, no head injuries, no drug abuse, and you're not on any medication. I had to screen 3,000 people to find 100 scans.

And so there are not that many normal people out on the road. So let's just own it. So you need to be paying attention and give a little bit more space, give a little bit more grace and space and grace is really important on the road. One thing that, uh, this is just a tip that might help you might not be, you can pick your own kind of music if you want, but it was so funny. So, cause we drive to LA so often and, um, my daughter doesn't like it when I grit my teeth and I'm grumbling and, you know, I get so annoyed. I mean, we've had so many accidents happen in front of us and people just drive so terrible and they're so aggressive and it annoys me cause it's dangerous. And so she hates when I grumble on the road cause she's just this little bubbly thing. And so she's, she just starts playing Christian music in the car. And I'm like,

that's just mean. That's mean. Because now I feel guilty, right? But it worked. All of a sudden, I did not feel so angry and stressed out. And I'm like, how can you be leaking negativity when she's playing this music? It was really funny, actually. So I've actually treated many people through the years who had driving phobias, because they got into an accident, or they almost got into an accident and it triggered a panic attack. And so every time they thought of driving, it actually triggered a panic response in them. EMDR is very helpful, especially to deal with single incident traumas because the longer you allow the anxiety to prevent you from driving, and I fully own, we've increased your anxiety today about driving. The longer you

increase, you don't deal with the anxiety about driving, the more the anxiety will control you. I don't think we're trying to decrease their anxiety. We want you to have appropriate anxiety. We want you to have appropriate anxiety, but not the kind of anxiety that's debilitating, right? Right. So. All right. When we come back,

we're going to answer your questions that you've already submitted. If you want to be entered into a drawing for Tana's cookbook, the Brain Warriors Way cookbook, which is amazing. All of the recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar, really limited sugar, corn-free and soy-free. I mean, it's really amazing what you've done with this book

and they taste great. And there, you can, a lot of them, there's a lot of vegan recipes in there as well, but you can interchange them. They're made to be adaptable for cavemen and vegans. Don't have a dog in that fight. So we just want you to be healthy. If you learned something today, please post it on any of your social media sites and hashtag brain warriors way podcast. If you like this podcast and we're here working, hoping you do, subscribe to the BrainWarriorsWay Podcast. Also, leave a review question at BrainWarriorsWayPodcast.com.

Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way Podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.