Change Your Brain Every Day - They Diagnosed Him with Alzheimers’…But it was Something Else

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

When Daniel and Tana Amen first met, Tana had been distracted by her father’s deteriorating mental condition. He had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and things were not looking good. However, as you’ll learn in this episode, when Daniel brought him to the clinic to scan his brain, everything changed.

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. Hey, everybody. Welcome. We're going to do the Reluctant Healer Week and actually talk you through one of my all-time favorite stories. I often say the way to get a beautiful woman to fall in love with you

is do something nice for someone they love. So what you're doing is teaching people how to manipulate? We're all manipulative. Why do people not get this? Everybody is manipulative. do people not get this everybody is manipulative it's just the more sophisticated you are the harder it is to tell oh i see and when i met you it's like oh my goodness that was so like a shot of cocaine not that i've actually ever done cocaine but it was my little heart went fast i'm like whoa beautiful and smart i'm a sucker for that and then you know a couple weeks later i scanned you because that's true sort of the lore in my family is a naked brain date one of my children or if i told myself if I was ever going to get married again, the first naked part of her was her brain I wanted to see.

And you had not only a beautiful brain, but you are beautiful, and you're smart. And then a couple of months after we knew each other, you got a call from your sisters about your father. But before we tell the story, why don't you read a review? So this is Healing from TBI by Whitney Mack podcast site. This is from our podcast site. Laughing my way out of a head injury. I've been listening to Dr. Amen and Tana. They have changed my life.

Diet and supplements both from their lists and company literally are lifesavers. So if you can laugh your way out of a TBI, that's pretty awesome. That made me happy to read. Well, most people don't know that if you've had a traumatic brain injury, you should do something about it.

You should put your brain in a healing environment because as we've seen here at Amen Clinics over and over and over, you are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. You just have to put it in a healing environment. And so the story starts, goodness, more than 13 years ago. The story starts when I was two months old. Well, I wasn't there then, so you're going to have to tell this part. Well, the story actually starts when I was a baby because I really don't have a relationship with my, I didn't have a relationship with my dad. My dad left. So my parents got divorced and my dad decided to check out. So

rather than at least making an effort to see me, he just was gone. He was partying, he started doing drugs, and then he cleaned up and became a minister. But even as a minister, he was not involved in my life. And then when he was involved in my life, it was sporadic. It was for a couple of weeks a year. Um, and even when I would see him, he was far too busy to actually spend time with me. So my step-mom would spend more time with me than my dad did. And he was just very sort of harsh. Um, so we were never close. And then, um, and then things got really weird when he divorced my stepmom and they started, he started partying with my sister's minister gone wild. Um, he's, he like went back to his old ways and I don't know, he just like went off sort of the deep end, starts partying with my sister. So he goes from being this like

very rigid, very sort of hellfire and brimstone minister to now like all of that just went out the window. And I just, it really threw me for a loop. And so I made it very clear to him. I never wanted to talk to him again. I was done. I just didn't understand him. And that was when you were 18. And I was just completely finished. I never wanted to talk to him, never wanted to see him again. And so, and then when I, after I got cancer, I sort of set that aside. I just let it go. I wasn't mad at him anymore. I just didn't have a relationship with him.

So didn't really see him. I'd seen him a couple times over from the time I was 25 to when I was dating you. I'd seen him maybe a couple times. But nothing, no relationship really to speak of. You know, it reminds me of the documentary we saw this weekend, which is, what was the name of it? Three Identical Strangers about these triplets that were separated at birth and raised in different families. But what nobody told the kids was they were part of a study. Right.

And one of them later went on to develop a mental illness bipolar disorder and killed himself and when they looked at the differences it came out to be parenting at least that was the implication and the one parent that was more rule-bound and harsher. Even though genetically these three men are the same, one develops real trouble. Right. So parents really do matter. Yeah, your environment matters.

And it may almost have been better that he wasn't in your involved in your life day in and day out because the criticism and the negativity was just bad. Well, and it wasn't a solid person. Right. And I'm obviously, I'm giving you the reader's digest version of what happened.

I mean, it was a lot more involved and complicated than that. so then we start dating, um, 13 more years ago now, and you get a call that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, that he's running a room, but he's not coming out of his room. And your sisters have no idea what to do. Yeah. They, they need my help. Um, he won't come out of his room. He's a recluse. He's not taking care of himself. He's not showering, you know, regularly. And, um, they're just really

worried. And my first reaction was, it's not my problem. It's just flat out not my problem. Why is this my problem? He's never been a part of my life. So, you know, why are you calling me? I was at that time a single mother, you know, working really hard. This was just not something I was ready or willing to take on. So,

you know, this is someone who I didn't have a lot of fondness for. So I didn't, I didn't really have a lot of anger anymore. I just didn't have, there was like nothing. So why is this my problem? And unfortunately,

or fortunately you were dating someone. When I hear stories like that, I'm like, let's see, he's diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Has anybody looked at his brain? No. They're just medicating him in the dark, and he's actually on a fairly odd combination. Well, and let's back up. The only reason I even talked to you about it was so you could give me a solution for them, not for me. I was looking for a way to help them take care of him. So you brought it up. Let's just be clear. Yeah, but not so that you could like bring him down and move him in with me. Well, that's not what happened.

That is what happened. No. That is what happened. No, what happened initially was I said, why don't you let me see him? See, I just- That's your sneaky way of let me move him in with us. No, I didn't want you to do that. Yeah, you're going to see, over time, that's what happens a lot. Well, I think God puts us on the planet to be useful, to be helpful. I think he put you and me on the planet for two different reasons, but okay.

But one would ask, why did I marry a psychiatrist? Why did God put you on the planet? Well, yes, to be useful in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure my way is supposed to be the same as your way. I'm a protector and it's so crazy how, but why did someone who learned to build walls and keep people in my family who literally like created massive amounts of chaos, just keep them out of my life? Why would I marry somebody who then just decides, oh no, we need to fix them all and move them in and keep them near us and bring them all back? Has the therapy helped you answer that question? No.

So to continue the story, he's diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He's a recluse. We bring him down, not to move him in, but we bring him down so that I can assess him because how do you really know what's going on in somebody's brain unless you actually look all of you've heard me say that over and over again and there are over 2 000 studies on dementia and alzheimer's disease spect is one of the best studies to look at it. It's actually used for dementia around the world. And here at Amen Clinics, we have more experience than anybody ever. And so when we brought him down, so I got to meet your dad.

I thought that was important, dating you. In fact, for those of you that are dating, you should get my book, Brain and Love, because chapter six actually tells you how to do a neuroscience assessment of your potential partner's family. So I've actually been thinking about this for a long time. Oh, I warned you way in advance. I held nothing back. Yes, that you come from crazy. Yeah. There's full disclosure. And so when we brought him down and I scanned him, he did not have Alzheimer's disease. He did not have the Alzheimer's pattern in his brain that's actually been described for the last 30 years. So he's misdiagnosed, mistreated. He's on the wrong medications, like weird medications.

He's on the wrong medications. And now at this point, I really do think he should stay close so that we can fix his brain. He had something called pseudo dementia, which I've diagnosed many times. It's people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, but their brain doesn't show it. Their brain actually shows they're depressed. And so that's what pseudo dementia is, which is depression that's masquerading as severe cognitive and memory problems. And I took him off his medications, put him on some supplements. And when we come back, we're going to tell you the sort of really interesting turn this story took. 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 interested in coming to Amen Clinics, use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.