Change Your Brain Every Day - What is Crocus Sativus and How Does it Help Treat Depression?

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

It’s time for another special “Brain in the News” episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast! In this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give their take on some of the most interesting news items revolving around brain health. This episode features information on crocus sativus and depression, binge-drinking and education, contaminated Juul pods, and using cannabinoids to treat mental health disorders.

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 back. This podcast, we're going to do Brain in the News. There's so much to talk about, but we hope we're going to get to four studies.

Before we do that, let me read another review. Um, I found Dr. Raymond's video, the most important lesson from 83,000 scans in my psych class. I'm doing a self-study on how my diet affects my anxiety and trying to keep up with the course plus full-time work. I've lost 11 pounds in five days, just ditching my daily iced coffees. Thank you. The combination of Dr. Amen's obesity scan and the podcast with Dr. Lustig's leptin fructose description was the aha moment for me. You both need Superman capes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The fat is scared off me

and my brain finally doesn't hurt straining to understand my schoolwork. Thank you, Gigi. That's a really important point that as you get healthy, it's not, it's just as you get healthy and you clean up your diet, your brain fog goes away. We hear that all the time. People can think better. Yeah, it's really interesting. Awesome. What have you got?

Do you have an article? I do. New lawsuit alleges that Juul sold one million contaminated pods. The company's CEO allegedly said that half of its customers would be too drunk and vaping to notice. Oh, no. Yeah. He got fired, though, right? That's insane.

The reason this bothers me is because kids are the number one market for this and when my daughter went to she goes she was used to attend a high school a local high school here with almost 3 000 kids or over 3 000 kids and they had to search the lockers because it was such an epidemic and all the toilets got stopped up that day all of them because they flushed their jewels down the toilets. Oh no. Yes. Oh no. So the lawsuit. The incidence of nicotine use in children went up 36% last year. Because they made them desirable. Right. And whenever you do bubble gum flavor, you know they're targeting children. Right. So the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California alleges the company has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers,es the company has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety

and the lives of millions of consumers, children, many of them children and teens. Yes, that's what they said. Wow. Yeah. So. Vaping is not in your best interest and it's not in the best interest of children.

For sure. No, he was terminated because he failed to demonstrate the leadership qualities needed in his role on a more positive note uh crocus sativus saffron um there's a brand new study crocus sativus saffron the world's most expensive spice. In a group of older people, so 50 older outpatients with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to either saffron, 60 milligrams a day, or to serotroline, Zoloft, 100 milligrams a day, good dose, for six consecutive weeks. They were equally effective wow and this is like the 17th study right on this is not like that shows that saffron is helpful which is why

we put it in serotonin mood support and i love it in my tea. And when I first started using saffron in some of the BrainMD products, we live in a neighborhood where there are a number of Persian families. And I was talking about it at one of the parties we were at. And the person I was talking to said, oh, in Iran, saffron, the folklore is if you're too happy yeah it's because you had saffron and isn't it interesting to see the science yeah and we were just talking about how there's actually 73 percent of people who use ssris like zoloft or prozac or leapro, Celexa, have sexual dysfunction. But saffron, which has also been found to be effective, is pro-sexual. So your function is better rather than it hurts your sexual function.

And I don't like that, 73%. Because if you're not being intimate with your partner, it can hurt your relationship. Right, and it makes you not feel as good about yourself. There's something about feeling desired and desirable in your relationship that just makes you feel better. Yeah, interesting. Awesome.

Okay. New study finds that every four extra years of education reduces the risk of binge drinking by 50%. Stay in school. Isn't that interesting? I mean, we're always joking. Stay in school, make good decisions. But it's so true. Not finishing school could double your risk of becoming a binge drinker. Researchers found that people who did an extra four years of school were 50% less likely to become alcoholics. That's just strange. Men and women who completed school were also more likely to drink wine, while those who didn't were more likely to drink distilled spirits, beer, and cider.

The team from the National Institute of Health said the findings suggest that promoting education may be a useful tool in public health campaigns that warn against alcohol abuse independence. You have to wonder if it's because they feel more competent or if it's because they've been in the habit of working so hard i mean i'm just wondering um i haven't read further into this i just read the headlines what the what the reason is what would you say well i mean in order to get through school you it's better to have an unpolluted brain because you tend to finish your classes. Right. You tend to show up.

You tend to do the right things. When I was in the Army, so when I was 18, I went into the Army and I became an infantry medic. And I was stationed in Europe with, in my room room in the barracks, there were six people, which I didn't really like very much. Five of them were smoking pot. And I went to school at night, which helped decrease the contact high for me. And they didn't, they just basically, here we are stationed in West Germany. It's so beautiful. I traveled all the time, went to school.

They stayed in the room and got high. Which leads me to the next Brain in the News study on cannabinoids in the treatment of mental disorders. So this is in Lancet Psychiatry. So one of the best journals in the world they did a systematic review of all of the studies published between january 1st 1980 and april 30th 2018 looking to see well you know the law is if you smoke pot that helps anxiety that depression, that helps you do better in school. In fact, the conclusion was there is scarce evidence to suggest that cannabinoids improve depressive

disorders, anxiety, ADHD, Tourette, PTSD, or psychosis. Though the evidence that's there is very low quality evidence. And in fact, there's evidence that marijuana increases anxiety, increases paranoia, and increases ADHD. So we're fighting, and brain warriors do this. We fight against the societal idea that marijuana is innocuous, that CBD is completely innocuous. And quite frankly, after seeing literally thousands of scans of people who are smoking pot, their brains are not healthy. And I published a study on 62,000 scans, the world's largest imaging study showing marijuana actually prematurely ages the brain. So a couple of, um, actually several teenagers now, a couple we've taken care of and helped in different situations. And, um, they, they don't want to hear this. They don't want

to eat cause it's such a, it's just such a common thing for kids to do when they're teenage years. And we'll tell them, you know, cause they're, they're depressed, anxious, having problems in school. And they don't want to hear that. That's problems in school, and they don't want to hear that that's the reason. Just like they don't want to hear that bad food is bad for them. It's just such a common thing. Literally, sometimes within – it's not while they're smoking it. It's almost like the hangover effect. All of a sudden, they'll notice this sharp decline in mood.

They'll be anxious. They'll be depressed. It's almost instantaneous. They'll start to notice it, but they don't want to admit it. But when you can finally help them make that connection, that that's what's really triggering it. You know, it's, it's for some people, it's obviously your genetics probably play a role for some people. It's very significant. And what are the studies that show that it increases the risk of psychosis by

400 and 50%. Yeah, in some people. All right, so what did you learn during this Brain in the News podcast? Write it, post it on any of your social media sites. We'd be grateful. Hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast. Leave us a question, comment, or review on brainwarriorswaypodcast.com

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