Change Your Brain Every Day - Top Strategies to Start the Path to a Healthy Brain

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

It’s the end of the first week of the Brain Health Revolution Challenge, and in this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you your marching orders to complete the first week’s tasks. Whether you want to take the challenge for yourself, or just want some quick, easy ways to get healthy, taking on the tasks outlined in this episode will set you firmly on the path toward a much healthier brain and healthier life.

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. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.

And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you

and we hope that you will join us in the challenge. I mean, you can do all these things as you can do them. We just want you to do everything this week. I want you to download and read the introduction and chapter one of my book, The End of Mental Illness. So we are going to give you the introduction and chapter one table of contents. All the great people said wonderful things about it. And there's no requirement to pre-order the book. I'd be so grateful if you did. Amazon, barnesandnoble.com, anywhere you can. And if you go to endofmentalillness.com and tell us you pre-ordered the book, you can actually download a number of free gifts,

including one of your cookbooks. They can download six of our public television specials and other things as well. Oh, there's a Bright Minds poster that they can do. What we're going to talk about next week and the week after, if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. We created a mnemonic for that called Bright Minds and this super cool poster to help you know what are your risk factors and what should you do about them. So download and read the introduction and chapter one of the end of mental illness, pre-order it if you can. Day three, we want you to know your brain type because one of the things the images taught us is not everybody's brain is the same. Some people have balanced brains.

Some people are impulsive. Some people are compulsive. And this is free. The BHA is free. All of these things are free for you. This whole challenge is free. And I'll nudge you like to pre-order the book because you need the book. And it will help you have a better brain and a better life. And it helps us spread the message. I mean, that's why we're doing this. So take the brain health assessment. Take you all five minutes.

You'll know which of the 16 brain types you have. And you'll also know a bit about the health of your brain. Day four, I created a handout for you. I want you to know your important health numbers. We always pound on this, but it's just really important. Well, again, you can't change what you don't measure. We're going to want you to know, what's your cholesterol and is it healthy? What's your vitamin D and is it healthy? And if it's been over six months or a year since you've done it, you need to do it again. Well, and I think for us, we do it about

twice a year just to make sure. And like my blood sugar is sort of chronically a little high. And berberine, a supplement, berberine helped to normalize it. I was like so excited. So work with your doctor. And often doctors go, you don't need that. Your doctor should not be your mother or your father. Your doctor should be your partner in health. And all the lab tests that we recommend are generally covered by insurance. Day number five, this is one of the most important exercises I give my patients. It's called the one-page miracle. Right. So if you were a patient here, we would have you do a lot of these things.

I have my patients do all of these things. But the one-page miracle is download it and on one piece of paper or one form, write down what do you want? What do you want for your relationships, your work, your money, your physical, emotional, and spiritual health? Because none of this is about should. It's about does it fit? Does your behavior fit the goals you have for your life? Yeah, this is a really important one. Just the simple act of actually writing it out helps people start to focus on it and manifest it. But if you take it then and go do one step further, I really like people taping it to their mirror. Put it somewhere where you can

see it or carry it in your wallet, but make sure you're actually looking at it regularly because just keeping it in the front of your mind is what's going to really help you make those changes. Yeah. So for example, on my one page miracle, I mean, I do it and update it a couple of times a year, but under relationships, you know, Tana is the most important relationship I have. I just write, I want to have a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship with Tana. I always want that. I don't always feel like that. I'm so glad that you don't act like you don't always feel like that. But when I don't feel like it, because I have done the one page miracle, I asked myself, will this rude comment get me what I want? And generally not.

Right. Right. I have a very strong, smart, beautiful wife. Who's not putting up with any grief. So why am I going to give you grief knowing you're not going to put up with it?

I'm going to give you 10 times back. Day six, I want you to focus on eating five servings, five to eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day. And many of these we want you to continue to do. This is one of those things, like you said, put up your one pagepage miracle, look at it every day. I want you to start adding more fruits and vegetables, colorful fruits and vegetables to your diet. Did you know there's a study from Australia that showed there was a linear correlation between the number of fruits and vegetables people have a day and how happy they are.

And it went up to eight. Most people have trouble with this one. And my tip for this, this is the one thing, the only way I can make this actually meet that goal is if I start in the morning and people are like, well, how do you eat fruits and vegetables for breakfast? You know, it's just, it's really hard. A smoothie. If you just commit to making a smoothie, your go-to breakfast for the next six weeks, it's like, don't even think about what you're

gonna eat for breakfast. That is what you're gonna eat for breakfast. And you just throw a cup of spinach and, you know, a cup of blueberries in there, a half cup of blueberries in there, and a little more. I'd throw spinach and kale and about a half cup of fruit in there. You just increased your fruit and vegetable intake dramatically for the day. So just commit to that for the next six weeks and you can switch it off, right? You can throw chard in there and you can throw, you know, whatever types of fruits and vegetables, as long as they're low glycemic and don't go heavy on the fruit, go heavier on the vegetables. So what does low glycemic mean for people? Low sugar. So you don't want things that spike your blood sugar really quickly. You want,

and one thing that I also do with my smoothies that will really help you throw in one scoop of like acacia fiber or inulin fiber, it acts as a prebiotic for the bugs in your gut. A prebiotic, meaning it feeds the bugs in your gut. So you don't just need probiotics, you need prebiotics. So if you just add a little bit of fiber and some fruits and vegetables to your smoothie and just commit to that, that being your breakfast. I've got like recipes for, I don't know, 15, maybe 20 different smoothies. Oh, they're amazing. Yeah. So just commit to that for the next six weeks.

You will be shocked at how much you'll not only increase your fruits and vegetable intake, how you will feel. Well, there you have it. Yeah. Day number seven. I created a meditation for you. We're huge fans of meditation. So many people grew up with trauma when they were young. And it reset their emotional brain to a heightened level. So if you just think

of the murder that you talked about when you were four, or your mom having to work three jobs, you were a latchkey kid, your grandmother that had mental health issues. It reset your emotional brain. I've actually published three studies on meditation showing how it increases your thoughtful brain, but calms down your emotional brain. And my favorite type of meditation is called loving kindness meditation. And the reason I like it, it just sort of fits my personality, but it has research showing that it decreases the effect of trauma, that it lowers anxiety, lowers your blood pressure, decreases headaches. And it's only four and a half minutes long. I do it for you so you can download the instructions for it and then just listen to it. And if you like it, listen to it all the time. We actually

have an app that you can sign up for brain fit life. It's one of the sponsors of this, um, challenge and on brain fit life, we have meditations, we have hypnosis audios. I'm a huge fan of hypnosis. We have brain enhancing music. So fun fact, it just makes my wife shake her head. but three of our albums have been on the top 10 new age chart on Billboard. Yeah, I shake my head because I know musicians who have been working their entire life and not achieved that. And he's not a musician and he's achieved that. I work with musicians and we put together these great albums, Brain Warriors Way. My favorite is Bright Minds. Bright Minds, which spent 45 weeks on Billboard's New Age chart.

Feel Better Fast, which spent 26 weeks. And in 2018 and 2019, I'm one of the top 10 New Age artists for Billboard, which is hysterical. But on Brain Fit Life, we have all three albums for you. You can listen to the music over and over again. Music to sleep, music to focus, music to relax, even pieces for creativity. There's so many ways to enhance brain function unfortunately most people end up going to their family doctor and they leave with prescriptions for antidepressants anti-anxiety sleep medication

without ever doing simple things to begin to reshape the health of your brain. Meditation for me is almost like taking medicine. It's insane how well it works. Do we have any questions? I've been looking at the feed and there's so many. Great. Thank you for your comments. Yeah.

I love to go through these. I love that. can we get this in our email to review some of us can't retain the abundant so we're gonna keep the video up and the video will also you'll be able to watch it again yeah and those of you who like this, who can handle our relationship, we've done 550 podcasts called The Brain Warrior's Way. It has like six and a half million downloads. And because we see a lot of people at Amon Clinics who have ADD, we decided we'd do them in 10 to 15 minute segments.

But I think you'll find this information really valuable. So 2,000 people showed up. Bless you. Yes, thank you. That's amazing. Invite your friends. Come back next week. We're going to start talking about the Bright Minds Risk Factors. We're going to talk about blood flow, retirement and aging, inflammation, genetics, head trauma,

and toxins. How do you know if you have it? And then what to do about it? So this is a question for you. If people do have questions that they would like for us to answer during the class, is there a way for them to send the questions in in advance so that they don't get sort of lost in the feed so that they stand out?

Or is that they just need to put them in the feed? Just the chat. Just the chat. OK. So we'll try and keep an eye on the chat then. So we need you to just put the questions into the feed, and we'll try and answer them that way. Great.

So let me just see if we have another couple of minutes. If there are any questions that come through. No apples before bed. Oh, this is a great question. What about juice? No juice. What? No juice. My? No juice.

My dad was a grower for Sunkist. So there's a really interesting thing. You can actually end up with people who drink a lot of juice

can get non-alcoholic fatty liver. So it's interesting. It actually can actually affect your liver. Yeah.

If I drink orange juice. Yeah. Apple juice, orange juice, pineapple juice. Now, small amounts of grapefruit juice, like tiny amounts of grapefruit juice. So the shakes are not made with juice. No, they're made with a little bit of real fruit. Because you don't want to remove the juice from the fiber source. If you're going to eat fruit, you need the fiber and the enzymes,

everything that goes along with the fruit, because it fills you up and keeps you from drinking 10 ounces of juice. Because when you drink 10 ounces of juice, you're getting something like 45 grams of sugar, 38 grams of sugar. That's like a soda. It's crazy. So you don't want to do that. That takes like seven or eight oranges to make 10 ounces of juice,

something crazy. Wow. So you don't want to do that. You want to eat the piece of fruit, not 10 pieces of fruit, a piece of fruit. Yeah, so no juice. Not good for kids. There was a world champion MMA fight this past weekend.

Good for your brain or bad for it? Everyone in my dojo is talking about it. I've never seen a shoulder strike. No, that was the first thing that came up in my lesson today. I just had karate today. The first thing that came up, Mr. White's like telling me, so this is what you need to do. He's talking to me about self-defense, not about MMA.

So he was telling me about that fight. So last week I actually got to see a world champion MMA fighter. And good for your brain or not good for your brain? Very not good for your brain. Not good for your brain. But I have to tell you, I do love karate. Like with a passion. Protect your brain.

Thank you so much for being with us. We will see you again next week. Send your questions, your concerns, fill out the forms. Really good turnout. Thank you. To seeing you next week. Take care. 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, podcast 10 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.