Change Your Brain Every Day - What to Eat: How to Stop Eating Poorly, with Dr. David Perlmutter

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

We all know that eating the right foods plays a HUGE role in how we feel, but we often forget that our bad eating habits make it much more likely for us to continue to make poor decisions, thus enabling us to choose to eat more bad food. In the fourth and final episode of a series with “Brain Wash” author Dr. David Perlmutter, the Amens and Dr. Perlmutter give you tips for breaking out of the cycle of bad habits.

We are going to start your new year, your new decade off with a bang. Tan and I are going to do a six-week live class. So starting January 21st, every Tuesday, we're going to be with you for an hour. And at the end, we're going to give away over $20,000 in prizes. We look forward to helping you kick off this new year by becoming brain health revolutionaries. 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 amonclinics.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. We are still here with our friend and my mentor, Dr. David Perlmutter,

and we're talking about his new book, Brainwash, which I'm really excited about picking up. It's just been so interesting, all the things that affect us in an adverse way. And now we're talking about what we can do, some of the strategies we can use to take control, take back control. Why don't patients do what you tell them to do if they know it's going to help them? Well, it's not just on them. It's because of the society we live in.

And I love what you've been saying. So we're talking about how to take control back. And I love that. So let's talk about food. I know you have thought about food for a very long time. And in Grain Brain and Brain Maker, you discuss it at length. You're also a professionally trained nutritionist. We would agree, and we talk about it on the Brain Warriors Way podcast, that you're in

a war for the health of your brain. In fact, we say that ISIS has nothing on our food industry, that the real weapons of mass destruction are highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber, food-like substances stored in plastic containers that have been raised with antibiotics and hormones. And so, you know, when I looked at your book, I'm like, oh, that sort of fits what David talked about. Sort of, yeah. So talk about your interest in then how brainwash can help people take control over their food because their nucleus accumbens, their pleasure centers, have been purposefully hijacked by the food industry that hires neuroscientists to get foods to be the

perfect crunchiness, meltiness, saltiness, to just take over your pleasure centers where cocaine and heroin work. Well, it's even worse than that. They're now using functional MRI to determine, in fact, what it is about food that lights up areas like the nucleus accumbens. That's readily available to the food industry. This has been happening since the early 90s. Home Depot was doing that. And I'm like, I get criticized because I want to look at the brain function of my complex psychiatric patients. I mean, I've been called every bad thing you can imagine.

And I'm like, Home Depot gets to use it. Pepsi gets to use it. And I don't, this is not fair. I didn't realize that. That's crazy. You know what? Don't you feel good though? Anyway, when you've just gone through that, I mean, I remember, this is off topic, but several years ago, I was attacked as well. Somebody wrote this scathing article in a national magazine saying that, oh, Dr. Perlmutter changes his messaging because he used to tell us to eat a low fat diet. And now he's telling us that some fat is good. Good. There are such a thing as good fats. He wrote this scathing article, and I remember the next morning, I had an intervention from my publicist and editor and everybody and publisher, and they said, what are you going to do? And I said, God bless him. Right. Nothing. That's the best he could do. So we let it go.

Right. But, you know, years ago, I became interested in nutrition in the brain. I mean, those things sound like they are completely disparate. But even to this day, there's very little discussion about the effects of our food choices on the health of our brain. Who knew? And that's where Grain Brain came in. We talked about the damaging effects of sugar and refined carbs on the brain. Now that's certainly part of the discussion. But now as we move forward with Brainwash, we're realizing that our food choices affect our mood

and affect our decision-making. That's the news, that what we eat helps us decide in the future what we will eat. That if you choose badly today, if the evil ruler influences you to such an extent that you make bad choices, that fosters continued bad choices moving forward. So our message then is one of recognizing the fundamental role of inflammation in allowing us to either access the prefrontal cortex or not, and how important it is then to choose wisely, to choose foods that do not foster inflammation. In fact, foods that will tamp down this process, being careful of the oils and fats that we consume, recognizing that some fats are actually good to eat foods that are rich in prebiotic fiber, fiber-rich foods in general, foods that are colorful, pretty much a

reduction in animal-based foods. We actually, believe it or not, from the Grain Brain author, are advocates now of OMD, one meal a day, being entirely plant-based. We chose to do that because of the fact that that is associated generally with reduced inflammation. And as a matter of fact, it seems to be environmentally a good recommendation as well. That raised a lot of eyebrows, especially from those who would say that grain-brain was simply the Atkins diet redux, which it was never intended to be, nor was it. But I think there's great value in recognizing that most of the food that we consume should really be plant-based and as such will help to reduce inflammation. So food affects our brain wiring, the hard wiring of our brains, allowing us to either remain in contact with our gift, the prefrontal cortex, or locking us into the part of the

brain that is causing us to be narcissistic, losing empathy, having decisions that are impulsive and short-sighted, and fostering fear. That's what food does to us. And when we look at food through that lens, then again, what's happening to food globally becomes a very intriguing story, doesn't it? It sure does. And it's, you know, the people that I coach and even myself, I mean, I can totally relate to that. You go through one negative event, whether it's, you know, like with your health or something, and all of a sudden you're down. And then you're down, so your mood changes. And so

then you start making bad decisions. And then as your mood changes, you want to be down more. You don't want to get up and go do stuff. And it's just this vicious cycle that all of a sudden just takes control. You are so correct. But what we're offering then in Brainwash, and in fact, we have a 10-day plan at the end of the book, you don't have to do each part of the 10-day plan. If you leverage a better night's sleep, if you leverage just deciding to dramatically reduce your refined carbohydrates sugar or if you leverage the part about reconnecting with nature for example it's going to then foster better decision moving forward and your mood decision making

moving forward and therefore help you welcome in the other parts of the program. We didn't mention connection to nature. You know, 87% of our day in America is spent indoors with another 6% spent in our cars, leaving very little time for connection with nature. I'm not saying anything here that we don't all know. We know we feel better. We have a better mood when we're in nature, when we're taking a walk out in nature we know that from a scientific perspective our inflammation markers go down our cortisol levels go down we re-engage the prefrontal cortex we tend to calm down the impulsive amygdala so nature exposure is something we have undervalued at least in america we know in Japan, for example, there's tons of research going on, which was something called Shirin-yoku, means forest bathing. But it doesn't even have to be

that you go out into a national park, just put a plant in your kitchen, or a photograph of a nature scene in your workplace has been shown to, for example, lower the stress hormone cortisol. These are simple on-ramps to better decision-making. So we're going to have to stop. But what I want you to tell our audience, David, is how can they connect with you? So obviously they can pick up Brainwash, which I gave you a quote because I love that book. How else can they connect with you? I know you have a newsletter. I get it every week, and it's loaded with helpful information.

How can our brainwriters- I would say if people are really interested in this information, go to brainwashbook.com. A great resource, I feel, is drperlmutter.com, drperlmutter.com. And one of the things, in addition to the blogs that both I and Austin write, video blogs, written blogs, is we have a very vast resource of scientific literature the entire pdfs listed not just the abstracts and you know the science part of drperlman.com is fully searchable by term just to go to the magnifying glass so i i would direct people there uh to learn more information great excellent well thank you so much adore you and are grateful for the work you do in the world and grateful that you're our friend. I love you guys. And I always, when I see this time

together on my calendar, I always really look forward to it. And we said this off camera, I'll say it on camera. We need to connect more often and have these amazing conversations. We do for sure. We'll look forward. Thank you. 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,

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