Change Your Brain Every Day - What’s Your Brain Type – 5 Types of Overeaters

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from looking at the brain is that all mental health issues are not single or simple disorders in the brain, they all have multiple types. In this episode, we tackle the different types of overeaters as we have seen in the brain.

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to the Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Welcome back. We're so excited that you're with us. Being part of our brain warrior community is so meaningful to us. And what we discovered doing this work over a long period of time is you're in a war for the health of your brain. But if you're armed and prepared, it's a war you can win and the benefits are just endless. It's energy, memory, better mood, and ultimately you give it away to the people that you love. So some of our listeners often say, but I don't really want to fight. I want to be a peaceful warrior. And that's okay. So if you are the more prepared and armed you are for, and you, the more aware you are, the less likely you are to have to fight. I want you to think about it like that. So if you're prepared and aware, you don't have to get into the fight. Number one, you can avoid the fight and think of Gandhi and think of Martin Luther King, right? Very peaceful warriors. Peaceful warriors. Peaceful warriors.

But effective. They're aware and prepared. Right. What we're going to talk about today is brain type. And the reason is when we started looking at the brain 25 years ago, so here at Amon Clinics, we do a study called SPAC that looks at blood flow and activity, looks at how your brain

works. One of the first lessons I learned was that all psychiatric problems, anxiety, depression, ADD, addictions are not single or simple disorders in the brain. They all had multiple types. And when I got really interested in physical health because I realized how your physical body is affects your brain. I went, well, even with overeaters, that there are different types. And I unveiled it in my book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. We talk about it in the Brain Warrior's Way, that the reason that there are thousands of diet books is that until now, virtually nobody got that everybody who had problems, one, it's their brain, right? It's your brain that pushes you away from the table telling you that you've had enough. Or it's your brain

that gives you permission to have the third bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. So understanding how you think and what your chemistry is and how you function is critical. Absolutely. And what I discovered looking at the brain is that there are impulsive overeaters. There are compulsive overeaters. So the difference is that an impulsive overeater is someone who has a thought and just does it, right? Right. They just act on it. And they have low activity in the front part of their brain.

Right. Where a compulsive overeater, they think about it. But they can't. Over and over and over again. So an impulsive overeater, they go by the fridge and they just go in and get whatever's there. But they weren't thinking about it all along. It's just the minute they see it, it's theirs. Right. The compulsive overeater, every time they're near the fridge, the fridge calls to them. Right. And they can't let it go.

It calls their name. They can't let it go. They can't let it go. And then there is the impulsive compulsive overeater, which is really common and actually common in children and grandchildren of alcoholics. So if you have alcohol in your family, I've just found that type three, the impulsive compulsive overeater is just very commonly has that family history. And then there's the sad overeater. So they're really using the food as medicine, if you will, to deal with their sadness. And then there's the anxious overeater. They use it to soothe their anxiety. So know which

type you have is really important because then you can get targeted help for that type. And we've talked about in previous podcasts, it's always important, in addition to knowing this, to know your important numbers because those important numbers tie into sometimes how your brain responds. Absolutely. And so let's just dig into it a little bit. So people have ADD, have a higher incidence of the impulsive type. Because your frontal lobes are low. Right.

So somebody close to me has this type. And every single day, they promise themselves they're going to eat right. And they do really good until about 11 o'clock. And they haven't had breakfast, which means they're going to have a low blood sugar. And whenever they go by the donut shop, they go in and get two donuts and a Coke because they're not managing their decision-making and impulse control. And the two donuts will actually make their impulsivity worse because sugar will drop. It will raise blood sugar and then drop it. Low blood sugar states go with low blood flow to your brain

and more bad decisions. So it's like a vicious circle. Right. And so the impulsive overeaters tend to be easily distracted, short attention span. Their organization is not great and they tend to procrastinate. They always have great intention. And these are the people, they often will end up in the family practice doctor's office and they'll say, well, I'm sad and anxious. They'll get on an SSRI, Lexapro, Prozac, Zola, whatever, drops their frontal lobes further. And they even become more impulsive and gain more weight. Right. We've actually seen, we've heard a number of stories like this, where they'll talk about how awful Prozac is. It's not necessarily

the Prozac that's awful. It was prescribed for the wrong person because for the wrong person, it makes them more impulsive. Correct. Now, the compulsive type tend to be worried, rigid, inflexible. If things don't go their way, they get upset. They can be argumentative and oppositional, and they can find too many errors either in themselves or in other people. And they have too much activity in the front part of their brain in an area called the anterior. It just means toward the front, cingulate gyrus. And serotonin interventions really help. Now, they actually get addicted to frosting. They get addicted to cakes and cookies.

I'm sorry, what? Why are you looking at me like that? Because the simple sugars, even alcohol, the simple sugars help to calm down that part of the brain. So short-term benefit, but long-term, really big problems with their health. You've never seen me in the corner looking frosting off of wax paper. I didn't say that. Impulsive compulsive means they have features of both. And so we actually have to raise dopamine for the impulsive people. You can do that with green tea, L-tyrosine, sometimes rhodiola or ashwagandha can help, and 5-HTP and saffron to help boost. So that was the impulsive-compulsive use. I just want to clarify one thing.

So for the compulsive people, they're the opposite of the impulsive people in a sense. They're the ones that actually do better on something like a Prozac where the impulsive people can make them worse or some natural treatments that help to calm down those frontal lobes, right? Right. Okay. So now I just want to clarify that. The anxious overeater where they pick their nails or bite their nails,

pick their skin, tend to be anxious, nervous, predict the worst. And they eat just because it helps soothe them. How is their brain different from a compulsive person? So we see their basal ganglia, areas deep in the brain. So they're emotional. Really active. And they can't stop working. They're like.

Can't stop moving. Yeah. Okay. So mine are always active, which is probably one of the reasons I can't stop working. And then the sad overeaters where they just have this dark cloud that follows them and they can be negative. And so for the anxious overeaters, magnesium can really help. GABA can help. For the sad overeaters, we like SAMe. And we talk about this in the brain warrior's way and in change your brain, change your life. But I just wanted people to know that

everybody's brain is different. You can learn more about your brain and your type by taking our free brain health assessment online. If you go to amenclinics.com, you can learn more about it. And then on BrainFitLife, if you go to mybrainfitlife.com, we actually have specific programs for each type. And when you take all the types and you combine them, there's actually 16 different types. Right. And so one of the reasons that we would like for you to do this, if you're not sure, is because it's not necessarily medications that are bad. It's the wrong treatment for your brain.

And this is, you know, it just it helps you to understand your brain type. And same with natural treatments. People think, oh, I can just willy nilly take whatever because it's natural. And that's not true. They're, you know, those things that really do work mean that if you're taking the wrong thing, it's not going to be as helpful as if you know your brain type. So just because it's natural doesn't mean it's innocuous, whether you're doing medication or natural treatments, we want them targeted to your brain.

Stay with us. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen Clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.