Change Your Brain Every Day - What is the Brain & Body Connection Behind Eating Disorders?

Episode Date: August 7, 2018

With the unrealistic standards of beauty we are bombarded with in society, it’s no wonder so many people suffer from eating disorders. But could it be that many of the causes of eating disorders are based more in biology than sociology? In the second part of “Love Your Brain “ series, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen describe conditions in the brain and body that may lead to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

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. So we are back. We are talking about Love Your Body Week. And today we're going to talk about some heavy subjects, eating disorders. And these are very painful for people who have them. Really hard, a lot of stigma attached to it, a lot of shame, and we really want to end that.

I mean, we've done several things now on it because it's such a big topic. So we're going to talk about bulimia and anorexia. In the next segment, we're going to talk about obesity. But there are other eating disorders like nighttime eating disorders, and you don't want to eat late at night. There's a dipper complex. If you eat two hours before bed, your blood pressure doesn't dip. So normally, say you eat at six or seven o'clock at night, and you don't go to bed till 10 or 11, what happens is because you don't have a lot of food in your body, your blood pressure will drop and that's

healthy for you. For the non-dippers, which means they eat before bed and their blood pressure doesn't drop, they actually have a significant increased risk for heart attack and strokes because of the persistent high blood pressure. A lot of people do that, especially they have carb snacks as a way to boost serotonin. So they worry less, they feel better. They're medicating themselves with sugar or foods that quickly turn to sugar, but it's not helpful. There are other ways to increase serotonin we actually make something that brain MD called serotonin mood

support that can be helpful exercise helps bright light in the morning is actually a study that shows it increases serotonin so just a little bit on nighttime eating disorders but anorexia is a potential lethal disorder. Yeah, it's really, really bad. Where people perceive their fat even though they're emaciated. Really, they're really thin. They're literally starving their bodies of essential nutrients. And because they are starving their body, they don't think rationally.

And in many ways, I almost think of it like a psychotic disorder because it's not rational at all. On their scans, we see that the front part of their brain works way too hard. And once they get a thought in their head, I'm too fat, scans we see that the front part of their brain works way too hard and once they get a thought in their head I'm too fat whether it's rational or not they can't let it go it's like they have a little mouse on an exercise wheel in their brain and the mouse just goes over and over and over I'm too fat I'm too bad even though there's not evidence of that so one thing I want to make sure

that we do is cover this from the four circles. Because I know I struggled a lot with body image when I was young. Struggled for some time, actually a short period because I was smart enough to get help. But with an eating disorder in my teenage years. And unlike a lot of people who go through this like forever. But what happened was I noticed that for me it was an anxiety issue. So it was not, it wasn't as much, because I never really had a weight problem. It was not as much about that as it was like this anxious feeling, like control almost. Well, and that's one of the psychoanalytic theories about anorexia.

It's I can't control anything else in my life, but I can control this. Yeah, it wasn't the feeling behind it. This was more like a stress relief type of like, ah, I can't, like, you know what I mean? Like that kind of like pressure. And so I think it's really important. Which goes more with bulimia where that anxiety and the release can be taking diuretics or taking laxatives or making yourself throw up. Yeah, right, wrong, or indifferent, I actually figured out that I loved intense exercise. So I sort of transferred the, but that was better than hurting myself.

Well, and intense exercise also, like nighttime eating, raises serotonin in the brain and actually works as an antidepressant. Right. And so, yes, that's one way to expel the energy. Let me talk about what happened when I was a kid. So I was really struggling. Of course, it was going through puberty. It was those years we talked about in the last episode. It was during that time.

And I grew up in a pretty stressful household, like chaotic, not a little bit, but a lot of it. But I had a lot of it. But I had a really cool mom. She just was busy and not there. But I was able to talk to her about this. Sadly, she freaked out a little bit, but she's still, because she loved me so much. But I remember her taking me to UCLA, to their clinic there. And I walked in and within 10 minutes of me being there, I'm waiting for the person to come in. She comes in, she gets a page and there's a code blue.

And I'm like, what the heck? I'm just, I'm a kid, right? So I'm like, what is going on? And everybody takes off running and she comes back. And apparently one of the girls who was in the facility went into cardiac arrest. That's all it took for me. I was like, okay, I'm going to find a different outlet for my anxiety.

Like it scared me. So it's a little like my uncle doing heroin, right? That scared me so badly. I knew I was never going to do drugs. That's for whatever reason, that was enough for me. So you're a crazy environment growing up. You learned from it. So you didn't have to repeat it.

Right, I never knew that it was dangerous. And I think that's one of the key points, is make sure kids know how dangerous it is. I had no idea you could die from something like that. So we talked about anorexia, and how 10% of people have that dying. There's also bulimia, where you have periods where you take in a lot of calories, I mean, sometimes

four or 5,000 calories at a time. Now, when we have places like the Cheesecake Factory, it's not that hard. Oh, my God. And then you feel awful about it. And then so you eliminate it, whether it's through vomiting, laxatives exercise whatever and then which is what you know i often say in my new book feel better fast and make it last coming out in november i talk about you have to be very careful what you allow your brain to do because whatever you allow it to do it's likely to do it again and then the behavior almost can become habitual. So what I really like about how

we do things here, I think it's so important because what I learned when I was doing it, I was young. So this was a long time ago, long time ago. And they really focused on the psychological aspect, which is fine. Okay. But they really they really over focused on that in my opinion they didn't focus on any of the other stuff and it was you know okay well you you live in a crazy environment or you live by the beach and you're always in a bathing suit or I don't know it was always that kind of stuff it was your thinking it was your mom what was what was your mom doing and I'm not saying that that is not important but I have since like done so much you know research on this

and looked into this because of what we do and now we know it's it's not just that there's the biological component your hormones your leptin and your grayling but also things like somatostatin and cck if those are out of balance you just lost okay let me just back up you have hormones in your body so let's let's start with when tana says we take a four-circle approach, absolutely true. There's a biological component to eating disorders. There's a psychological component. There's a social component. Who are you hanging out with?

And there's a spiritual component. Why do you want to be healthy? Why do you care? What's your biggest sense of meaning and purpose? If your biggest sense of meaning and purpose is to be that model on Instagram, then you're much more likely to develop an eating disorder. Right, if that's your big purpose. So it's looking at those four circles. So under biology.

So you have these hormones that are designed, some make you hungry and some make you feel full. Okay, so you can see where the problem is if those are out of balance. People who are obese, they have found that oftentimes those are very out of balance, the ones that make them feel full are low, the ones that make them feel full are high. With anorexia, they actually also found that there's somatostatin, which is that is a hormone that makes you feel full. Like after you eat, you get this feeling like, okay, I've had enough to eat. Theirs was so out of balance, like so high that if they took a bite, they would get that feeling. And so you can see where the problems are. So it's not just all psychology. There are issues biologically. So knowing that can be so helpful.

Plus, here's a little secret. I call it practical neuroscience. If your vitamin D level is low, the hormone leptin that tells you to stop eating doesn't work anymore. And you're hungry all the time so if we think of for bulimics who you know they desperately want to be 105 pounds even though they're five seven um but because they don't go out into the sun because the dermatologist won they made us afraid of the sun um and their vitamin d level is really low they're hungry all the. And so they can't properly balance their appetite. Really important. And then there is, you already mentioned the social circle,

who you hang out with. Let's do a little bit more on biology because genetics are really important. So what runs in your family? Do you have a tendency to be anxious? Do you have a tendency to be depressed? Do eating disorders run in the family? Did you have a head injury? So common. So the imaging studies on anorexia, the ones I've done, their frontal lobes work too hard. With bulimics, they have this pattern we call impulsive-compulsive. So part of their frontal lobes works too hard. It's called their cingulate gyrus. So they worry, they hold grudges, things don't go their way, they get upset. But another part of their frontal lobes, the underside, doesn't work hard enough. So they're impulsive. They can't control their impulses, but they get stuck. So they get stuck on a thought and then they can't

control it properly and so I think of bulimia as the perfect impulsive compulsive disorder and compared to anorexic so they have like 300% increased risk of having ADD so ADD has to be ruled out with bulimia it's actually fairly rare in anorexia. So they're almost the opposite. Anorexias are more like OCD. Yeah. Do you remember with Chloe she has a very busy brain and she was struggling with body image during that time and we scanned her and her brain was super overactive she used to like she wasn't she didn't she didn't have anorexia she liked to eat but she was so controlled.

It was like, it was a little worrisome how much she controlled her food. And I was like, wow, that's not normal control. That's like, that's like some serious control there. And once we balanced her, she stopped doing that. Like she literally stopped doing it. And she still makes good choices. Really good by choice now. But it's not a compulsion. It's not obsessive. Right. Right. Okay. And she still makes good choices. Really good by choice now. But it's not obsessive.

Right. Right. Okay. And then the social circle. So how does that show up in, and this is not, let's just be super clear. Eating disorders are not teenage disorders, right? I mean, they often start in adolescence, but there are a lot of 50-year-old people that have eating disorders.

So, and even with me, those feelings that I described, like that anxious feeling, two other times in my life, they popped up. Fortunately, I'm able to recognize them, so I could get it under control really quickly. After I had cancer, and I had no control over anything in my life, and after my divorce, when I felt the same way. I felt sort of hopeless and out of control, and I felt that same, like intense lack of control and that, that anxiety coming up. And fortunately at that stage, you know, I have more to work on it for, and I understood and recognized it. So you can figure it out. But if you don't recognize it and you don't see it coming.

So if you're struggling with an eating disorder or you have a child or a loved one who is it's really this four circle approach to understanding it but then let's also talk about what to do about it in a biopsychosocial spirit well you mentioned the social part and i think that's really important because we do live in a place where the value on looks and name brands and everything is so high so trying to do something to counter that and keeping your child connected to something that is more important whether it's volunteering doing mission work church whatever it is for you that gives them a different perspective to realize that is not the end all in the world. And I'm just really clear that this

whole Instagram issue is a problem. So that's the social. My name brand is Hollister. It's so soft. The sweatshirts are $39. I do admit to Lululemon because I wear gym clothes like 90% of the time, but that is my downfall. All right. So from a biological, and you do this beautifully, is you teach people how to eat right. Because often when you have anorexia or even bulimia. You can make it worse. That you are malnourished. And we're going to talk about that next time we talk about obesity. That many obese people are actually malnourished.

Sort of sounds crazy. But you brought up one thing that I can't let go. The way you eat, especially if you have a compulsive disorder, like that where you have to eat a lot, you can't stop it. How you eat can actually affect that. So I know there are a lot of therapists who teach like there's no bad food. And I'm like, I'm not sure about that. There's no bad whole real foods. But when we're talking about processed foods that are made with chemicals and they're designed literally to make

you addicted, that's not true. And if you're eating certain foods, you are actually doing to your hormones what we talked about before. You are with those foods, putting them out of balance, and that will make you hungrier. So there are foods that can make it worse so when your blood sugar is low you're much more likely to make a bad decision with food which will then want to throw up I have a great example so I was treating this 23 year old woman who had bulimia and she did really well we were having her journal and chart her progress and she had three weeks where she did great. But then one day she didn't eat at work and she went out to a restaurant to meet her

friends. So she hadn't had anything to eat for like 12 hours. And the first thing they did was order drinks. She had a drink. What does alcohol do? Drops your frontal lobes. Drops your frontal lobes. Makes you more impulsive. And then she didn't order the nachos, but one of her friends did, ordered the nachos. You started eating it.

She started eating it, and then she ate too much, and then she felt full, and then she went into the bathroom and made herself throw up. And this is common. And if you go, oh, well, you shouldn't have eaten the nachos,

it's like, no, it starts way before that. So it's not eating to go into a vulnerable situation, you know, restaurant, alcohol, bad food, and no blood sugar. So low blood sugar. And then the alcohol, which dropped her frontal lobes further. So if she just would have ate something healthy before she went, that could have helped prevent this whole chain. And so people go, oh, well, we have to stop the vomiting. It's like, no, you have to get that chemistry right to when you go into vulnerable situations. Oh, by the way, the day before, if she'd eaten something processed, heavily processed with a lot of chemicals, that set her up too.

So then people don't realize that really yes you're so smart i'm you know that's what annoys me because you're so smart it irritates me all right so you got to get the biology right and another thing i've heard you teach girls to do is you got to eat right most of the time. Because when you nourish your body, your brain works better. And so think of a plate, 70% plant-based foods, 30% high-quality protein, lots of healthy fat mixed in. And you're going to think better and make better choices. And feel full. FYI, you will feel full. If you're going to think better and make better choices and feel full if you're fyi you will feel full if you're nourished and then of course you want to get your important numbers checked you want to check your thyroid you want to check your vitamin d level um to make sure that your

brain is as healthy as it can be and then the psychological circle um the interventions or whenever you feel vulnerable, start journaling. Write down what you think. You don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. And if you hang out with people who have eating disorders, you're so much more likely to have them. Or people who are over-focused on, and that's all that's important to them, is their looks.

That's going to be a problem. If everything is about money, looks, partying, that's going to be an issue. So we often say the fastest way to get healthy is to find the healthiest people you can stand and then spend as much time around them as possible. And then the spiritual circle I find is just so important. So important. Why are you on this planet? And why is the world a better place? Because you breathe. I love that question that you always ask people. And does it have eternal value? And one thing that really, it's so different seeing Chloe now from Chloe when she doesn't go to the public.

We don't really like the schools in our area. It's a long story. But anyways, we're happy to miss all that drama. So we homeschool her, but we keep her involved in a lot of social activities. And she got really involved in the leadership program, the student leadership program at church and the level of purpose that she feels. And that is purposeful. That's important. There's less depression when you feel purposeful. There's less anxiety when you feel purposeful. It doesn't mean there's none, but it's less because your focus is not on you. It's on how you can help others. And when you are outwardly focused, you are less

obsessed about your body. 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.