Change Your Brain Every Day - What If Mental Health is Really Brain Health?

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

For Dr. Daniel Amen, using imaging to actually look at people’s brains completely changed the discussion around mental health. What he found was that mental health is actually brain health, and when you get your brain right, your mind will follow. This episode of the podcast continues the discussion from The End of Mental Illness 6-Week Live Class and Challenge.

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. So the imaging work we've done at Amen Clinics just completely changed the discussion around mental health for me. And so you said you almost canceled your first date with me when you found out I was a psychiatrist. I just thought psychiatrists were weird. Tana is a neurosurgical ICU nurse. And I also worked for Medtronic in their neuro division. So brain anatomy was something I was highly focused on, but psychiatry, not so much. Well, but you're a highly trained person that worked with really complex patients. And actually, after our first lunch 14 years ago, which has been the best 14 years of my life.

Me too. I'm not kidding. That you went, oh, you do things differently. Oh, no, I was immediately interested. As soon as I realized what you do, you told me what you do, I was so confused at first. I'm like, wait, I'm confused. Why don't all psychiatrists do that?

Well, that's our goal. The end of mental illness is to get our colleagues to start looking at what they do before they do it. So imaging changed everything. And what I learned a long time ago is nobody really wants to see a psychiatrist, he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. Now, that is not a cool thing to say to your son, right? He did not get father of the year. He was working when Father Knows Best was on TV trying to model healthy parenting for fathers. It's so funny. But I sort of get it after 40 years of doing this that it's sort of our fault because we don't act.

I mean, what doctor doesn't look at the organ they treat? Do you know any other medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat? No one wants to be labeled as defective or abnormal, but everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental health was really brain health? So if I had to summarize the end of mental illness, which is a big book, it's got 1,084 scientific references in it. But if I had to sum it up, mental health is brain health. Get your brain right, your mind will follow.

And then I tell you exactly how to do just that. When you reimagine mental health as brain health, people see their problems as medical and not moral. It decreases shame and guilt almost immediately. It increases compliance because people want better brains. They have more trust in the diagnosis and it increases forgiveness and compassion in families. And that's just so important because if you have a mental health issue, you're not. Your kids are suffering. Your parents are suffering. Your siblings are suffering.

Brain health issues affect everyone in the family. So that's step one. Let's get rid of the term mental illness. Call these things what they really are. Brain health issues that steal your mind. Well, if that's true, and it is, step two is you have to fall in love with your brain. And nobody loves their brain because you can't see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly. And you can do something when you're unhappy, but because most

people never look. Most people don't know. And early on when I started scanning people, I scanned my children, my ex-wife. I scanned an aunt who has a panic disorder. I scanned a lot of my friends who I knew needed scans. And then I scanned my mom when she was 60. And she just had a stunningly beautiful brain. Now, that actually doesn't surprise you, does it? No, because your mother's amazing. She's still amazing. had a stunningly beautiful brain. Now that actually doesn't surprise you, does it? No. Because your mother's amazing. She's still amazing. She's 88. Yeah. And she has 53 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She knows everybody's name. I don't know everybody's name. She knows everybody's birthday. She's so organized. She's everybody's best friend. And she's like so incredibly organized. It's just so crazy. And so she has this really great brain. And then I got up the nerve to scan myself

and it sort of looked terrible. And I'm like, why does my brain look so bad? But I played football in high school because I didn't know better. I had meningitis twice as a young soldier. I was an infantry medic and I had bad habits. I wasn't sleeping. I ate fast food. No residence. Like it was my best friend. Yes, residence medical students.

They don't model brain health for you. And so when I got scanned in 1991, I developed brain envy. I wanted my mother's brain. Freud was wrong. He was about two and a half feet too low. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I've been doing this for 40 years and have not seen one case of it. The kind of envy you need is you need brain envy.

So Freud was wrong. It's brain envy. And 25 years later, my brain was fuller, fatter, healthier. And that's the message. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. We can prove it. And with a better brain, always comes a better life. So one of our friends, Doug, came to see us. His brain looked terrible.

He was raised in Normal, Illinois. I got to visit Normal, Illinois. It was really fun, actually. I got to meet- It it's really fun actually I got to meet it's the only normal there is I got to go to the normal grocery store I was interviewed on the normal radio station I finally got to meet normal women being from California that was not common and they had the same problems

we did everywhere else and he grew up on a farm around a lot of pesticides he was also a mixed martial artist. And he was struggling with brain fog and fatigue and poor focus. And he said when he saw his scan, for the first time, it was like seeing one of his children. And he knew once he saw it, he would never again do anything to hurt his brain um like you know when you saw chloe you knew you had to stay home and you had to protect her right and now that she's 16 and she's starting to separate yeah i'm just traumatized. You still want her home and you still want to protect her.

She's breaking my heart. This is Doug Scann three months later. Did hyperbaric oxygen, which we're a big fan of. Did supplements that we're a fan of. And we're so proud of him. A couple of months ago, I went and spoke, you came with me, to crossings, to an addiction recovery program. And before the program, they had a sobriety chip ceremony and, um, you know, less than 30 days sober. Here's your chip. Although I'm not sure where they get a chip if they're less than 30.

Because it's the hardest to get. Oh, that they show up. The first 30 days. Yeah. The first 30 days is the hardest to get. So if they're a day sober, it's like, it's just hard to get those first few days. And then 60 days and then 90 days and then a year. And I was just thinking to myself, I know way more about this than I want to. Thousands of addicts. And when I went up, I said,

so how many of you that just got your less than 30 days sober chip have brain fog? And like, they all raised their hand. Oh, you could see it. And I said- They look like deer in the headlights. Well, these are the scans. You know, the addiction scans are some of the worst scans we see. But if you do the right thing, four months later can be better.

So imagine trying to become sober with a brain like that, trying to get sobriety when your brain is functioning the way a brain like that functions. So that's why it's just so hard. It's really hard. And doing the right thing. So it's like a vicious circle. And doing the right thing, it can be better. And a year later for this person, his brain was so much better. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. And so here's Tamara and the girls, uh, the night she got her one year chip, which we are so excited. And it's so interesting.

It's the longest she's been sober since she was 13 years old. So imagine that many years of doing that to your brain. It takes a while for it to come back. So big ideas from today we need to get rid of the term mental illness call these what they really are brain health issues that steal your mind and then the second big idea is if you want a better mind, you have to fall in love with your brain. And one of your tasks, so part of the challenge, and you're basically going to place yourself, if you will, is you do each of these things over the next seven days. And then we're going to have a form for you to

fill out each week just to rate your mood, your focus, your anxiety, your memory, pain, and so on, because we want to track your progress over time. And so all of you should have been emailed this very cool form about the challenges for the week. And we have the links for you to go to on our page. And day one, we want you to share a tiny habit. So we actually explain what tiny habits are. We learned it from our mentor, BJ Fogg, and his sister, Linda. It's the smallest thing I can do today that will make the biggest difference.

And we worked with them for six months and we created 50 tiny habits for you. And the mother tiny habit, the most important tiny habit is ask yourself, this takes three seconds, this one question, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that question with information and love, love for yourself, you're going to radically change the health of your brain. And so the task is to share it with someone. So just type it out, explain it, and just share it with one person. Because when you share something, when you do this program with a partner, it'll double your success. When Tan and I were involved in creating the Daniel Plan at Saddleback Church. What we found, those people who did that six-week challenge, I mean, actually turned into a

year, turned into a life for many people, it doubled their success. So not very hard. This will take you all of two minutes to do. 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. 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.

For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.