Change Your Brain Every Day - What if Everything You Thought You Knew About Your Brain was Wrong? With Dr. Earl Henslin

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

When psychotherapist and author Dr. Earl Henslin first considered using SPECT imagery to help diagnose his patients, he was concerned that the scans would eliminate the need for other types of testing, possibly hurting the bottom line of his practice. But when a family member in need had their brain scanned, what they found changed Dr. Henslin’s method of practice forever. In the first episode of a series about the brain and psychotherapy, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are joined by Dr. Henslin to discuss his introduction to brain imaging.

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 to a very special week with a very special guest, Dr. Earl Hensland. Before I introduce Dr. Hensland, I want to ask you this question.

What if everything you thought you knew was wrong. And that's how I met our guest. Dr. Henslan is a psychologist, a licensed marriage and family therapist. He went to the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, which is part of Biola. He's the author of 10 books, the co-author of three. He has led seminars and retreats for lay people and professionals

nationally, internationally. He's been involved in coaching executives to become brain healthy organizations. He and I have worked closely together for the last 25 years. He's one of Amen Clinic's best friends. He has his own group practice in Brea here in Southern California, but he's just, he's so smart. And Tan and I wanted him to have him on with you this week. And this week we're going to go over how imaging changes everything, how the brain and psychotherapy really go together very nicely,

and we're going to share some inspirational stories along the way. So welcome, Dr. Henslund. It's a delight to be here with both of you, my two favorite people. And it's been so exciting the last 25 years. I know, it's hard to believe. It's kind of like that. So when I asked the question, what if everything you thought you knew was wrong, what did that bring up for you? Well, it brought up to me that first seminar that I was at.

At that time, there were so many patients coming in on ADD medication. And I'd read literally five or six books. And after a while, they all just sounded the same. Nothing was new. But then your brochure came across the desk on ADD, but it was showing pictures of the brain, and that just excited me. I knew there'd be something different here. I'm so thankful today that that one choice back then led to me meeting you.

When I was sitting in this room with probably about 250 to 300 other professionals, I was just stunned, you know, as you went through slide after slide after slide after slide, because several things hit me all at once. The first one was that if I was going to jump into this, I would have to be willing, ready to rethink every model of psychotherapy that I use, whether it's individual, marital, or family, that I would have to rethink that because all the models of therapy that I've been trained in assume there's such a thing as a normal brain. And they didn't take into account brain chemistry, brain function, and so on. The second thing that hit me is that if I took this step,

I was estimating I would probably lose about a third of my practice income because at that time I have a strong background in forensic testing and so on. And so when people would come in, I'd put, you know, they would probably take anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 worth of tests to get a good report with a diagnosis and plan. I had psychiatrists, physicians just refer people to me just for that, even medication recommendations at that time and so on. But I knew then that when people came in in crisis, I couldn't look at them anymore and I'll say that was the best use of the money. Because when people are in crisis, they're motivated to do whatever it takes to change. And I knew I could get more information that was user-friendly with one picture than with

the hours of testing and report write-up and so on. And so I sat there, Do I have a good practice? Things are going well. Things are going smoothly. If I do this, but then I realized what if five years from now or 10 years now or 20 years from now, this is the norm. And I missed out on an opportunity to help people in an entirely new and different way. And that's why I went up during a break and met you and encourage you to start a clinic in Southern California yeah you are the reason that we expanded from our small clinic in Northern California our second clinic was here in Orange County yeah no it's totally a hurdle because all of a sudden, 25% of our patients came from Southern California because of Dr. Hensel.

So we owe our relationship to Dr. Hensel? We do. Oh, wow. Because I definitely would not have met you if I had stayed in Northern California. Well, God works in wonderful and mysterious ways. It's so true. Yeah. And then you started sending me patients,

and then you came yourself, and then I started scanning people in your family, and one of my favorite stories is of Jessica. So right after we opened our Orange County Clinic, your niece came. Right. You want to tell that story? Oh, sure. Jessica had a congenital ureter problem since birth. And what that meant was every year she'd go up to John Hawkins for all kinds of invasive procedures because they were

waiting for her to get older before they did the surgery to correct that. So she's needle phobic. What I'm watching is a little girl growing up who has all the signs of looking autistic. She'd have problems with anger, panic attacks, and it was affecting the whole family. And it took me two years, you know, to convince my brother-in-law to get his little girl scanned so when Jessica came here my sister you know was with her and Mike was a wonderful guy to the works here to this day who's great at sticking I mean he draws blood it makes it like it's not even happening well she saw that needle and she started screaming and wouldn't let him come near her. And then she said to this gentle soul, she said,

Do you have children? She's all of five years old. And he goes, Well, no. He says, Well, what makes you think you can help me? And so he walks out of the room shattered and and I to this day if I run into Mike all I gotta do is say the word Jessica and it's a PTSD reaction so then they eventually called Dr. you know Uncle Earl to come down so I raced down here wondering what in the world am I gonna do to help motivate this little girl to get a scan? So my sister and I were in there talking to her,

and my sister pulls out a $100 bill and says, will you do it for this? And she goes, no. And then Sandy goes, well, what will it take? A puppy. Oh, she's smart. Smart working it. Because her dad had said there would never be a dog in the family. And, of course, my sister says, you got it.

And she sat there perfectly still when they injected the Ceratec and got the scan. And then it showed a ring of fire, which is, it looks like the whole brain is lit up. And, like, anything can trigger anger or panic and things like that. And you and I talked for about an hour and decided on topamax. And so because it hits the left and right basal ganglia and helps stabilize the temporal lobes, which has a lot to do with mood regulation. And literally it was like 72 hours after the first dose of topamax that my sister heard the words, I love you. And then when Jessica, when she asked Jessica to pick up her toys or do something like that, she would do it rather than it being a big war. So I had so many experiences like that because, you know, say if they brought in a Jessica to my office, well, we'd look at it as a family systems problem.

It does affect the whole family, no doubt about it, but the intervention is different. Because then if you balance out the brain chemistry, then you can actually make some changes with therapy. And what happened was several years later, they were out here for my son's wedding and I was bothered by the fact that she was like two years behind in school and you know her anxiety anger all stayed managed but yet she wasn't learning and I knew she was an incredibly bright

little girl dad's evidenced by the puppy. Exactly. And so we scanned her again. And what was so fascinating, and also at five years old, she was diagnosed with arthritis. So she was on an anti-inflammatory for that. But it showed there's still a lot of activity over the whole brain, but what it did show was that there's so much funnel cortex activity, hyperfrontality, that that's why she wasn't learning because she's all putting all her energy into managing the pain of the arthritis and there's nothing left over

to actually learn to get new information in or retrieve the information. And at that time, Dr. Renee Thomas, you know, had been talking to us about omega-3 fatty acids. And she had a clinic in Boston then. And so my sister was in Virginia and took her up to, the whole family went up to see her. And Renee put her on a pharmaceutical-grade liquid fish oil, and took one month to work up to one tablespoon, and then my sister dropped the Vioxx 50% with no return of pain. Wow. Months two, got her up to two tablespoons, which was like the equivalent of 14 to 16 grams per day,

took her completely off the Vioxx with no arthritis pain coming back. So that anti-inflammatory effect of the fish oil took care of that. Well, then month three dropped the topamax 50%, no return of anxiety. Month four, no return of anxiety, took her completely off. And so now it's just strictly nutrition with high levels of omegas. And then we re-scanned her. And by that time, you'd opened the clinic in Reston. And I've always been so grateful because that was like,

that's actually an hour drive from my sister now. And on that scan, you get a normal-looking brain. The ring of fire is completely gone. It showed a little bit of a dropout in the front part of the brain, which showed the need for maybe a stimulant. But her learning skyrocketed. I mean, she was at grade and level and beyond. And just last year, she called me up and she said, Uncle Earl, I want to thank you for never giving up on me. So it gets me.

That's so sweet. And she graduated on the honor roll from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in psychological economics, behavioral economics. Now she's looking at graduate schools. Wow. And she'll say to me, do you think I can do this work on the honor roll? And I said, well, Jessica, your grades are better than mine ever were. Right. So.

Right. She says, what better person to have someone like me who's lived it to do it? And I said, you got it, Jessica. You'll be great. So now she's looking at graduate schools. That's amazing. Yeah. I have a question.

Sure. Did your practice, did you end up losing a third of your business? No. I was just curious. No, no. No, no. No, no. It grew because then it was like that time my oldest daughter was running the office, Rachel. And she told me, Dad, do you know you have a reputation for being the place to go when you've lost hope? Oh, interesting.

And I said, really? She said, interesting. everything's just an interesting problem he'll sort through it and you'll get better it'll be okay that's what a great compliment yeah particularly from your daughter so uh so that's the reputation that's built now we've we've had uh families from hong kong uh korea uh europe uh all across the united states many families many families from Canada that will call and we work with them in getting the history done. And now there's eight Amen Clinics to send people to. So I've referred people to every clinic in the country, which has been exciting. When we come back, we're going to talk about how you use the information

from the brain, from the scans, in doing psychotherapy with patients. Because it's not just hardware. It's how you integrate hardware and software together. You bet. 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. 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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