Change Your Brain Every Day - What Happens to Your Brain After a Concussion? With Dr. Kabran Chapek

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

When you suffer a brain injury, even something as minor as a concussion, your brain won’t just heal on its own. You must be active in your recovery to avoid experiencing the various side effects that often accompany these injuries. In the last episode of a series with “Concussion Rescue” author Dr. Kabran Chapek, he and the Amens discuss the impact that a brain injury can have on your life, and why it’s crucial to put your brain in a healing environment.

We are going to start your new year, your new decade off with a bang. Tan and I are going to do a six-week live class. So starting January 21st, every Tuesday, we're going to be with you for an hour. And at the end, we're going to give away over $20,000 in prizes. We look forward to helping you kick off this new year by becoming brain health revolutionaries. 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 amonclinics.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. We are still here with our friend, Dr. Kabron Chapik,

and we're talking about his book, Concussion Rescue. Such interesting conversation through this week, just about how many people get head injuries and don't know it, aren't treated for it, aren't properly treated for it, and there's help and so we're talking about some of the risk factors but also what you can do and i'm so excited not just about your book um dr chapik but about the course um there's just something about that i think it's going to be really helpful to people to walk them through with you holding their hand so i'm excited about that. Thank you. So we sort of ended on D in Bright Minds, diabetes and how critical it is. Because if you're overweight, you automatically have four of the 11 Bright Minds risk factors. If you're overweight, you have more inflammation

because belly fat actually produces inflammatory adipokines that increase inflammation throughout your whole body. Fat stores toxins. So you have more toxins and you have lower overall blood flow to your brain, which is the study I published in Normal People and in our NFL group. So working on getting your weight to a healthy level. I love this. I have this new story. I'm seeing the son of a very famous bad guy. And it's just been two months. He's lost 30 pounds because he just does everything I ask him. I love that. Those are the people who get better.

But you're bringing up a good point because so many people think that when we talk about weight, we're body shaming. No, it's not about that. It's about your health. And weight isn't easy for everyone to lose. But if you're having trouble with your weight, you need to be checked out. And I personally think that you need to be checked out on multiple levels. Biological, obviously, to see if your hormones and everything else you're, you're nutritional,

right? So, so biological, psychological, if you've got a lot of excess baggage from the past, you need to, you know, deal with that. Um, social, your social circles matter when it comes to your weight because people are contagious. So weight is tricky and it's not as, it's not about us body shaming. It's about us wanting you to get better. And so if you weight is tricky. And it's not about us body shaming. It's about us wanting you to get better. And so if you're struggling with that, it's complex. It's not one thing. It's not a matter of willpower.

It's way more complex than that. But much more common in concussions and head trauma because 91% of them affect the prefrontal cortex. And hormones we just talked about and that leads us to ask is sleep problems become very common after a head injury that's right yeah i was actually um giving a lecture at a brain injury conference about four years ago and someone in the audience asked me why why do people with brain injuries always have sleep problems and i was kind of stumped like okay what's the actual mechanism? So I had to go back to the literature, look at this.

One of the reasons is just less melatonin production. I was wondering. So yeah, so there is less melatonin production. Melatonin is a hormone that can be very over the counter. Yeah, I have to take it. And maybe I think it was after the head injury. I can't sleep without melatonin. Like I can, but I'm fitful.

I don't, it doesn't, plus the thyroid. So melatonin and magnesium, so helpful. So helpful. So you're on board with this fact that you had a head injury? Well, I am now. Didn't have a choice after I saw my brain. I'm like, it's either that or I have a really bad brain for no reason. I have this little dent in the front. And the other reason is hypocretin. So,

hypocretin is another, it's a wake-promoting hormone. So, it's the reason often people are really tired after brain injury. Oh, interesting. It keeps people awake. And so, it's suppressed for some, a subset of patients after brain injury and so often people feel and just there's damage and so the neurons aren't firing properly and in sequence and in series and so it's kind of like your neighbor with their music on and it's sort of keeping you awake at night and then during the day it's annoying it's just sort of like there all the time so the the neurons aren't able to shut down when it's time to go to sleep they're not able to wake up

fully and have good focus and memory when you're awake so it's a real it's like and then you know another part of that is the lower frontal lobe function what most people don't know is the frontal lobes are in large part inhibitory what that means is they send signals to your emotional brain to settle down so when you start spinning on thoughts take the frontal lobes offline your amygdala and your hippocampus start screaming at you every bad thing that ever happened not just that i'm like one of those people in the middle of the night all of a sudden i'll wake up i have a list i have a list in my head at four o'clock in the morning. I'm so glad you don't wake me up and tell me the list.

But I mean, I'm wondering, is that common for people who have had head injuries? Like what you're saying, if that inhibitory process isn't working, are we more likely to start spinning on stuff at night? Yes, absolutely. Yes. What about the Erlen syndrome? What I've found is it's so common in people who have traumatic brain injury. It is. They're light sensitive. Their depth perception is not as good.

They have headaches. When they read letters or words might move on the page or they get blurry. And wearing colored filtered lenses is so helpful, so healing. Some of my NHL players actually wear colored tinted masks when they play because their depth perception is so much better. And so I think almost anybody that's had a concussion

should at least get screened for the Irwin syndrome. I agree, 100%. And we had Helen Irwin on a couple of times. So interesting. I'm like a huge fan. You just need to like do these things. And so it just, you know, as our time comes close to an end it's insane and i'm a psychiatrist i can diagnose insanity it's insane to have a significant concussion go to the emergency

room and then have them go you're fine even after a ct scan you're fine um it just go rest no we've seen so many people's lives destroyed from that process well it's it's a cause of suicide undiagnosed brain injuries is a major cause of suicide it's a cause of homicide it's a cause of homelessness another brand new study out 50 percent of homelessness of homeless people had a significant brain injury before they were homeless. In Toronto, that number is 58% for men and 42% for women. It's a major cause of depression, of panic disorder, as you talked about, Cabron, ADHD. And how would you know if you didn't look? There's this great study that they actually scanned people right after they had a head injury.

And if their scan was normal, they had 100% chance they'd recover well. And if their scan was abnormal, that wasn't predictive because the brain has many healing mechanisms. But nine months later, if it's still abnormal, that wasn't predictive because the brain has many healing mechanisms. But nine months later, if it's still abnormal, it predicted with a high level of certainty, you're in trouble. And so that's where SPACT, I think, is the best tool because an MRI and a CT scan show structure, but they don't show function. But wait, so you're saying after nine months, if it still has problems, you're in trouble.

But what does that mean? Does that mean that even if you didn't treat it right then, is there still hope later if someone treats it? If they put their brain in a healing environment. So let's say they didn't put their brain in a healing environment for several years, five years, ten years. They suffered those consequences, but then they realized it. They can still be better. In fact, in my NFL work, I treated a lot of older NFL players. Some of them were in their 60s, 70s, even 80s. And 80% of them were better two months later if we're doing the

program that Cabran talks about in concussion rescue. So the brain's more plastic than we've given it credit for. The brain is more mendable we've given it credit for the brain is more mendable more moldable tomorrow your brain can be better if you sleep better tonight if you eat better today your brain and it can be worse right if i mean i did a scan of um a news anchor recently this can look terrible and i'm like looking at him like cocaine, heroin, what is this? And he got no sleep the night before. And so I'm going to scan him again to go, is his brain just terrible that we need to fix? Or was it the severe sleep? Well, and we've seen the same thing with severe dehydration. People's brains look terrible.

Your brain can be better tomorrow by doing the things that Dr. Chavez talks about in his book, Concussion Rescue. I'm partially so excited about it because I answer questions on social media. So many of them are people just are terrified after having a concussion and they don't know what to do. And even if you tell them what to do, it still seems a little abstract, abstract and vague to them because this is, this is what we do. That's not what they do. And they need someone to hold their hand because they can't focus. So the daily process of holding someone's hand is just going to be critical. And so hopefully if you're listening to this, you can just see how insane the current recommendations are.

And our recommendation is immediately you put the brain in a healing environment just as if you broke your leg. It's so important. If they take the course, once the course is out, what are they going to learn beyond what we've talked about today? They're going to learn what labs to have their doctor order for them. They're going to learn more about specific nutritional recommendations. For example, how the ketogenic diet may fit in. It's not for everybody. It's a therapeutic diet and it can be very healing for some people i had

a patient who was a airline pilot and he went out for drinks when he was in australia got punched out and couldn't fly back that's why i don't go out for drinks and so he was suffering for for many months and he was he got over he couldn't take pills anymore. It's like, I couldn't do someone. What's one supplement I can take that will help me. And I said, don't take any supplements, do the ketogenic diet. If you want to do one thing, let's try the ketogenic diet. And in several weeks he had more energy. He was sleeping better. And now, and then he was able to take the supplements and do it all.

And now two years later, he's finally going back to work. Yeah. It's a good point. Sometimes the one step leads to another of our supplements. So if you're like, what's the least I can do, it would be one scoop of the bright minds powder. Yeah.

Because it's called bright minds powder because we go after all of these risk factors and take Omega three, take between two and four of omega-3 power and one scoop of the Bright Minds powder. That's where I would start. Absolutely. And it's that formula that I used with our NFL group. And we showed significant improvement.

Well, you are a joy as always. Concussion rescue. Well, you are a joy as always. Concussion rescue. We appreciate you. I am so proud of you for writing this book, for talking about it. This is just an issue. It's not going to go away in your lifetime or my lifetime.

And it's a needed resource. And you are a brain warrior. And we're proud of you you thank you so much you you're both inspirations to me and thank you so much for having me on it's been an honor thank you it's an honor to work with you great all right brain warriors way podcast 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 brain md 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.

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