Change Your Brain Every Day - Traumatic Brain Injury: Could You Have One and Not Have Known It?

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Many of the patients Dr. Amen sees at his clinic have a recurrence of dark, often suicidal thoughts, and they often attribute these thoughts to their own messed up way of thinking. But what if these thoughts are the result of a physical problem, or more specifically, a head injury? In the first episode of a series about hidden brain injuries, Dr. Amen and Tana reveal the surprising connection between bad thoughts and traumatic brain injuries.

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, everybody.

We're so thrilled that you've joined us again. This week, we're going to talk about one of the most common things we see here at Amen Clinics that completely shocked me as a psychiatrist. We're going to talk about head trauma and all the different ways it manifests itself to cause, to mess with your mind. Well, and one of the surprising things to me, which we'll talk about, was a shock to me because I'm a neurosurgical ICU nurse, so I dealt with TBIs all the time. So my idea of what a traumatic brain injury means was very different than what it means to you and what it means to our patients. So my idea of what a traumatic brain injury means was very different than what

it means to you and what it means to our patients. So I want to talk about that as we go. Right. I mean, you know, you'd saw people. With their skull flaps. We would take a flap, you know, piece of skull out. Have a projectile go through there. Right. We'd have brain drains. And I mean, that's the stuff I saw. So I thought that's what TBI meant. And that kind of TBI is so visible. Right. That we know. It's easy to see the consequences. Right. Where, super sad story this week,

Kelly Caitlin, who was a silver medalist in the 2016 Olympics in cycling, killed herself. And a couple of months before had suffered a concussion along with a broken arm. And her family said she was just not the same. And so people don't think of concussions really as causing lasting brain damage. But let me just tell you a story. I learned this very early from the imaging work. I do. And when I would see damage, especially to the left front side of the brain that people would get dark thoughts often suicidal thoughts and i wrote a column in the local newspaper where i lived in northern california in the daily republic on the connection between head trauma and suicide and i was at my office

late one night and i got a call from a mother who was crying and actually stayed to see her that night. And she told me about her son who was 16 years old, who had a bicycle accident the year before. Straight A student, good boy. And then after the bicycle accident, and they said he had a mild traumatic brain injury, his front tire hit the curb and he flipped over onto his head and he was unconscious, but only for a few minutes. And she said, after that, everything changed. He was mean, he was irritable. He didn't do well in school.

And a couple of months before he shot and killed himself. And she said, do you think that head injury had anything to do with it? Probably everything to do with it. Because when you hurt your brain, you hurt your life. Well, and depending on what part, right? So it can really affect what kind of behaviors emerge. And Kelly was one of the highest performers, right? And she's going to Stanford.

Medalist who's going to Stanford. Her whole life in front of her. Who is a triplet, so connected to her siblings. And I have another friend actually who when I filmed the show for CNN behind the mind I scanned the anchor and she had a beautiful brain and was highly successful but her sister and their twins was not nearly as successful because her sister fell from a bunk bed from the top and had a significant traumatic brain injury. And very few people ask, well, this person's really successful and this person isn't. Well, it's because they don't care or they're not motivated. And I just want to tell

you, it's way more complicated than that. But let's talk for a second, because like I said, a lot of people have this idea that it has to be really bad. You have to lose consciousness. You have to be in the hospital. And when you go to the hospital, they'll often say, oh, go home. You're going to be fine. Even if you had a concussion that happened to my mom recently, she had a really bad fall, which now what two and a half years later is still affecting her life. Um, she had a brain bleed and that they told her she was fine and they sent her home. It was crazy. So this happens all the time. Let's talk about the difference though. What about for people who never go to the hospital, who never lose consciousness, um, who, who never lose consciousness, who never realize. You mean like Tana Amon? Yeah, that they had a brain injury.

Because I just, that never crossed my mind. And I think so many people who are hearing this are going to go, wait, I didn't know that qualified. Well, and one of the biggest lessons I learned early on about traumatic brain injury is people forget that they've had serious ones. Think of it as a traumatic brain injury. And so I saw a new patient yesterday and you could see the damage and his

frontal lobes and in his temporal lobes. And I'm like, so when did you have a head injury? Oh, so I didn't. And sort of like when you and I had first had that discussion and I went, are you sure? Did you ever fall out of a tree off a fence, dive into a shallow pool? And he told me from 13 to 19, he was basically abused by his older brother who would take his head and smash it into the linoleum floor. And so you could see the damage on the skin. I can see that.

But he's not recalling it because he's not thinking of that necessarily as a brain injury. Right. He's thinking of it as his brother beating him up and how many kids get beat up. Correct. So whether you were beaten by a baseball, whether you're in a car accident, whether you played, had concussions playing sports. I remember when we did the Logan Paul video. If you haven't seen it, you can Google it. It's about 14 minutes long, but it's worth watching. He comes in. Especially if you've got kids. It's helpful.

And he's so insightful. And you wouldn't think of that if you've seen his other videos. No, you wouldn't. But he actually was. But he comes in and he says, I want to know why I'm an asshole. You're not supposed to say that out loud. I so wish so many of my difficult patients would have that kind of insight. But he said, I want to know why I struggle with empathy and relationships.

Connection, right. And he played football for four years and he was really good. So even if he had a concussion, the coach would want him to continue playing. And he fractured his skull in seventh grade in a trampoline accident. So as you stay with us, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about

some of the symptoms. And many people have traumatic brain injuries well they sort of get better over time but they can leave a lasting mark on you and then we're going to talk about well what do you do about it um and so many people go oh, don't do anything for a couple of months. Right. Wait until it heals. Remember in our grief podcast, we talk about when do you start healing from grief? As soon as you can. When do you start healing from traumatic brain injury?

As soon as you can. And you look at how critical it is because this poor girl who had her entire life in front of her killed herself within a couple months. And if we would have seen her, if we would have scanned her, we could show the problem and then we would have started to put her brain in a healing environment.

But many high achievers, she's a very high achiever, and she actually, if we did a neuropsych test on her, she may have scored in the normal range, but she wasn't normal for her. So it may have taken her IQ from 130 to 115. And she may have absolutely hated that because she knew she wasn't as good as she was. And if you're a perfectionist, that can really drive the darkness in your head. Now you have a review.

Thank you for listening to our podcast. We are grateful. Yes, we love the reviews. So the videos, this video gives so much food for thought. No pun intended. Thanks a lot for your help. We definitely need to reconnect with our body, our brain, and with one another. And he's referring to the video with Dr. Perlmutter, which was amazing. We love having him as a guest and I cannot figure out how to pronounce his name. Romesh Kanadi. Okay. So thank

you so much for that. All right. Stay with us. More on traumatic brain injury shortly. 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.