Change Your Brain Every Day - What Is the Best Pain Management Strategies After Surgery?

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

One of the biggest issues we face directly after a surgery is how to manage the pain. We need to be careful how we approach this crucial time to avoid lasting brain fog or even addictions. In the final installment of a week-long series on Surgery, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the use of narcotics, over the counter meds, and even less conventional treatments such as acupuncture.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the 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 nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. We are continuing on Tana's recovery. We are two weeks post-surgery. And as we do, whether it's raising kids or being married or dealing with a mental health issue, you know, whenever they sort of affect us, we're going to share them because we know

that they may help you. Well, there's a lot of people dealing with similar stuff. So I'm going to read a couple of testimonials. I'm a month into the supplements after having my spec scan done through my psychiatrist, and it's making a world of difference. I love the books. Dina Baer, Time. Thank you so much.

I mean, we're here to make a difference in your life. Also, from Dane the Dancer. I love that. Dane the Dancer. I feel less alone with the struggle of telling that my form of autism caused by a vaccination at 12 months, I had the similar symptoms. That episode makes you more of a saint than ever. Feel that spec scans should be the norm for all children diagnosed with autism. Yeah, how do you know unless you look?

You know, it's one of the things that I've often, that as a parent, I often tell my daughter. It's like don't, like feeling alone is like the worst thing. And anything you're going through, people tend to feel whether it's shame or pain or fear or whatever it is, when you do it alone, it's so hard. So, you know, pain shared is pain divided. So it's just, it's really important that you don't feel that aloneness. You need to have someone that you share that with. Well, and building a community.

That's why we're grateful you're part of our community. But being connected through the podcast, through church, through your family, through your friends, it's just super important. Yeah. So you had a number of epiphanies around i did so you have to excuse me i'm wearing my yoga clothes today because i still can't wear anything tight on my body so everything's just loose and t-shirted today so if you're watching the video that's why um but yeah so we taught we've been talking about all the things you need to prepare going in and all the things you can do afterwards to make sure you heal faster and feel better fast. Right.

So but something happened that just really woke me up to what some of our patients must feel. And I had this just this different level of empathy. It was sort of weird. So I don't do well with a lot of I don't do well with pain medications to begin with. I just don't really, I hate the way they make me feel. Just that nauseous kind of like, bleh, don't like it. But you have to take them for a couple of days, right? So I took pain medicine for the first 48 hours because that was really the rough part. And then after that, I only took them for a couple of nights because I couldn't sleep at night if I moved. So I took just one pain pill at night before I went to bed.

But I still had to do something for sleep. So I started taking over-the-counter. You'd think over-the-counter medication, no big deal. I took some Advil with Benadryl in it. The lowest dose of Benadryl, 12.5 milligrams, lowest dose you can do. Just to help me sleep so that I could get my sleep. We just got done talking in the last episode about how important sleep is. So I knew I needed to

sleep. I don't want to be waking up all night. So I am doing everything I can to not take like these toxic levels of drugs, take the minimal amounts, take things that I can. What's the balance between not feeling so much pain and sleeping and all that? And I was doing really well. I was sleeping that. And I was doing really well. I was sleeping a lot. I was doing really well. First couple of days were fine. And all of a sudden, by about day six, when I should be doing a lot better, I start noticing that I'm just very apathetic. And I thought, okay, well, maybe that's just still surgery. There's like a lot of apathy. I get up and even Chloe got really

nervous. My daughter got really nervous and she came down and she's like, I'm not used to seeing you like this. I was so tired. I felt like I was walking through mud. Couldn't focus. I sat down to try and like do my meditation. Could not focus on meditation. Could not focus on like my Bible study. Couldn't focus on anything. I just didn't care. And I was so tired and nothing made sense. And just, I just laid there like a bump on a log. And then I tried to go out and do something on the first day that I could finally go out and do something. I like barely made it through, came back home, went right to bed. And then it occurred to me on about the eighth day, I'm like, I'm going to try sleeping without the Benadryl because I don't know what's doing this, but I feel terrible. Maybe it's just post-surgical, I don't know.

So I went to sleep without the Benadryl, woke up the next morning, bam, jumped out of bed. Like I was like, whoa, it's a whole new day. Like someone lifted the fog. And then from that point on, I was fine. I was absolutely fine. Back to myself, still tired. Don't get me wrong. I still have to recover and I'm tired.

But I didn't have that depressed, apathetic, sort of can't focus on anything. Don't care about anything. A lot of people use Benadryl to go to sleep. Yes. My sister was using 50 milligrams. So I don't even know if that's like allowed, but anyways, she was like, it's definitely not suggested. So my point is, yes, we want you sleeping. But my epiphany was this. People are coming in here. Sometimes things are so broken. They're hurting so badly. They're so broken.

They're doing everything they can. I know. I've seen it. I've experienced it personally with my family. Where they are so broken, they don't know what else to do. So they're just doing what they can and taking whatever medicine they can to help them survive the moment. I get it, but we're giving them stuff to do that's going to help them feel better and they can't focus on it. I know they can't because I certainly could not. I could not. And I was taking the minimal amount of an over-the-counter medication and within a couple

of days I was not myself. And I just, it just occurred to me that we need to be really aware. You know, I know you are aware. I'm not saying you're not, but it really helped me think about what people are going through internally if they've been taking these drugs for a long time. Like this epidemic with opiates is tragic. So I want to actually say that in a published study, in a report published in JAMA Internal Medicine this month, that long-term use of anti-cholinergic medicine. Like Benadryl. So these are medicines that decrease the neurotransmitter

acetylcholine. Like Benadryl, increase the risk of dementia. And I think you were feeling, I mean, obviously you weren't demented, but you were beginning to feel cognitively, I'm not as sharp, I'm not as happy. I just felt terrible. Definitely not happy. And so this is really important because, you know, the medications that your doctor puts you on, often without much thought, like Benadryl. But wait, some of these you can just go get on your own.

You don't even know anything about them. You don't know what the side effects are. And people just go buy it. They just indiscriminately. You're not supposed to be this excited after surgery. No, I was so, I'm telling you, this struck me so strongly. I strongly. I'm your nurse. You have to calm down. No, this is important. People are able to take this stuff with really no knowledge of what it's doing to their brain. You're absolutely right. And the other huge issue that we haven't talked about is naive systems. So people who've never

had narcotics are getting narcotics and then they get hooked on them because I don't know how they're getting because you're not like well in so many ways but a lot of people once they start narcotics they can't stop them I know I understand Because when they take them, all of a sudden they feel better. But I think it's... Wait, let me finish. They feel almost what they believe other people think is normal. Now, obviously, these opiates, opiate narcotics, they're dangerous long term and they can cause addiction.

And as we've seen in this country, they can steal your life. your wisdom teeth removed and somebody gave you an opiate like Norco or Vicodin or Percocet or Percodan or morphine and you felt really great. Don't keep taking them. Bad idea. Really, really bad idea. Let me finish. Okay. Then I have a question. Let a question finish go do acupuncture oh i love that because acupuncture has been found in studies to actually work through the same endorphin mechanism in the brain but rather than make you stupid over time and give you constipation and addict you to it, it can actually increase blood flow, improve your mood, and help rebalance your system overall. Okay, I'm done.

So two things, two things. Because acupuncture, you thought I was being like, you thought like it was all in my head. Because I just tried acupuncture for the first time prior to surgery. I wanted to like get my body all ready for surgery. And so I tried acupuncture and I, I cannot believe how good it made me feel. I'm like, this can't be real. Like this cannot be real. And you just started laughing at me. Cause I'm like, why does, why? There's no way someone

sticking needles in my body is making me feel this good, but I felt so good. And I slept so good. It was amazing. You were so much better. I was so happy. And I don't usually think of you as a placebo responder. No, I'm actually cynical. I'm pretty cynical, actually. Now, one more thing I want to go back to. This is too important and I didn't want to forget about it. That's why I kept bothering you. You talked about people feeling normal when they take the painkillers.

When people start taking painkillers like that, if they have to take it for any length of time, because I have somebody that I know right now who's gone through a surgery where they're actually just really in a lot of pain long term. It's like a long term chronic pain. That's where it's dangerous, I think. Are those opiates one of the drugs that actually

change your brain function and make you dependent chemically? Yes, there are actually many medicines that I call them insidious in that once you start them, they change the function of your brain in order to need them. So you just want to be thoughtful, careful, like benzos, opiates, serotonin drugs. That doesn't mean you don't need them and it doesn't mean they're not helpful. But if there's another way to do it,

it's worth thinking about the other ways to do it. So hypnosis can be really helpful for pain. Omega-3 fatty acids. Yeah, now I'm back to my meditation. Well, and I think for you, since you got that really great response from acupuncture i can't wait to go back it's not a bad thing to do i'm getting ready to film my um new public television special feel better fast and make it last and i was reading through the acupuncture

and acupressure literature and just a super simple exercise like rubbing the bottom of your earlobe so just slowly rubbing your earlobes between your thumb and your first finger that it sends a relaxation response now if you have big ears like me then you have a lot of rubbing room to go. Another one is this one. Yeah. Feels good. There's an acupressure point. It's actually over here.

An acupressure point on your wrist that when you hold it, again, it has an anti-anxiety effect. So, so many simple things we want you to do before you go after some of the heavy duty meds that you may have trouble stopping. Yeah. One of the things that made me realize that it might be the Benadryl that was doing it, that made me like, okay, maybe I just need to try stopping this altogether. Because it just didn't occur. I didn't ask anybody. I was just taking Benadryl, right? Because I was taking a tiny dose. You just don't think about it. But I remembered that I had taken, God, many years ago. I was prescribed after some procedure.

They gave me Ambien to sleep. And after two days of taking Ambien, two nights of taking it, I would burst into tears uncontrollably. And I was like, what the heck? I was like, it made me crazy. Well, that was actually a huge gift for you. Because Ambien is another one of those medications that once you start it, it's really hard to stop. The New York Times just did a whole article on psychiatric meds. You cannot stop. Oh, that one was awful.

I would never want to start something that I couldn't stop, that I would begin to lose control over my own mind. I have enough trouble controlling it. So I just wanted to put that out there because I want people to think about. This was a really good podcast. You're so smart. Well, actually, I don't know if I'm smart. It was just an epiphany I had that I think it gave me a lot of empathy. Because people start taking these meds for a lot of various reasons

and they end up in trouble. And it just made me realize, wow, they can't sort of, well, it's not that they can't, it's hard to do some of the things, even though you know they're the right things. I was eating terrible for a couple, well, there's not really much terrible in my house,

but I was eating terrible for me. Okay, so in that, and I even asked you to go get me this bean and cheese burrito and you looked at me like, what? like what are you doing i can't be seen in public well i just but my point is is i just didn't feel good and i didn't care and i wanted something like comfort i was just like what is going on with my like what is the matter are we blaming that on benedro my overall mindset was completely not the same it It was just not the same. It was just

very weird. So what is the parting word you want to leave with people for surgery week? What are the big ideas that came from your experience? Okay. So I think these podcasts will help. So be prepared in advance, get your body completely ready in advance, ask the right questions, prepare your environment, prepare your mind, do everything you can on your side to be as So be prepared in advance. Get your body completely ready in advance. Ask the right questions. Prepare your environment. Prepare your mind. Do everything you can on your side to be as healthy as you can going in. So build your reserve.

You've got to build your reserve. That's really important. Arm prepared and aware. Right. And you've got to have that physical reserve. That a warrior doesn't start training on fight day. Right. You've got to train before fight day.

You've got to be ready. So build that reserve. Be ready to go. But then also have this knowledge about what's gonna happen, not just with your body. Like I asked all the questions about what's gonna happen with my body, what's gonna happen with the recovery, what's gonna happen, I knew all that stuff.

I didn't really think about some of the other things. So this podcast can help. Know what's gonna happen with the drugs, know what's gonna happen with the drugs, know what's gonna happen with the recovery, know what the potential complications are, so you can just have a plan, right? And get your mind and your body in the right state. Don't pollute it with a lot of negativity.

Start with, today is going to be a great day. Finish each day with what went well today. That'll get your internal environment to be healthier. And have a really good support system. I mean, that was just so, that really made all the difference. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10

to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.