Change Your Brain Every Day - When You Stop Learning, Your Brain Starts Dying

Episode Date: October 11, 2017

In part 3 of a 12-part series on Memory Rescue, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen dig into the next memory health risk factor from BRIGHT MINDS: Retirement & Aging.

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. Welcome back. You're listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. This is lesson three of memory rescue, where we are talking about the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. In the last episode, we talked about blood flow. You thought I was obsessed with sex, and it's not going away. I don't think it. The obsession stays. I'm very clear.

In this lesson, we're going to talk about retirement and age. How old are you anyways? So the R in bright minds. I'm very young. Apparently. Very young. You keep reminding me about your genes. So your genetic testing. So in this one, we're actually going to talk about telomeres. So telomeres are the end caps.

Yes, that. That's the test you keep reminding me about. The end caps of your chromosomes. And as we age, they get shorter and shorter. But if you do the right things, you can actually lengthen them. So I had mine tested. You can test to see how old yours is. I don't even want to have mine tested because having cancer, like I already know, like I

don't even want to deal with this. Right, that I'm 14 years older than you, but physically I'm younger than you. You aren't actually. Like I do all the right things, but I don't even want to hear it because even if we're the same age, I don't want to hear it. I just don't want to hear it. I'm 63 and when I had my telomeres tested it said my telomere age was 43 I did the little happy dance I was so excited so happy but being married to you and this is really important if you have a

partner who supports your health it just it just makes it so much easier than if you have a partner who supports your health, it just makes it so much easier than if you have a partner that doesn't. Now, if you have a partner that doesn't, make sure you find someone at church or somebody at work or one of your friends to do this with. And but, you know, I mean, I did the happy dance because I love my wife. I love my children. I love my grandchildren. I love my mission. I love my life. I want to keep it going.

And the only way you're going to keep it going as you age, you actually have to be more serious about doing the right thing. I agree. And in all seriousness, I mean, I, you know, I give you a hard time because you're, he is, he's like, he's a little adolescent once in a while when he gets these tests back. And, but in all seriousness, um, yeah, no, I took a big hit, you know, with, I mean, you take these tests and the first thing they ask you, have you ever had cancer? Have you ever, and then you get a big ding for those things. So yeah, it drops your, or it increases your score rather. Um, but,

but I do appreciate the fact, cause I have to work harder. So then most people might have to, to just get a normal, to just feel good, to just be able to fight some of what I've already had to deal with. So having a partner who lives that way, who supports my health habits is critical for me. Um, I would still do it because that's just me and I'm kind of a brat, but makes it so much easier to have someone who really supports me in that journey. Well, and there are a lot of couples where there's an age difference. So, I mean, yes, cougars for women, but also women who marry older guys. And you want to support each other's health. So we were at a basketball game with one of our friends, Bob Delaney, who's the head of NBA

referees. And he has a younger wife and I'm working with him on how to get healthy. And he said the one thing that sort of hit him between the eyes, I said, you don't want to be doing all this work to get your wife ready for the next guy. That's just mean. She's like, wow. But it's true. And you obviously, I don't want to put stress on you by having to take care of someone who's cognitively impaired

or more likely to be sick. So the risk factors under retirement and aging, so the older you are, the more likely you are to get dementia. That's no secret. But when you stop learning, your brain actually starts dying. Right. It's sort of like this signal to the planet, all right, we're done, time to make room for the next generation. And yeah, it's like this sort of process that happens. Right. So even if you're in a job that does not require new learning, you increase your risk of getting dementia, or you're retired and you're not engaging in new learning activities, whether it's a language or a musical instrument

or traveling where you have to learn new streets and new directions. If you watch too much television that increases your risk especially today you know if it's msnbc or fox news and it's all the stress about you know the political divide uh that's going to increase your risk of cognitive impairment um being lonely or being socially isolated like your dad who had become a recluse, that that increases your risk as does having high ferritin levels. So ferritin is a measure of iron storage. And when the iron storage in your body is too high, it promotes rusting.

But what about when it's low? Because that really makes you feel lousy. When it's low, it's not good for you because you don't have energy. You have anemia. You can't focus. Because I take ferritin and it's like the Lazarus effect. It promotes heart disease and it promotes brain dysfunction. Right.

So you need to know that number. So how do you know? You get your ferritin level checked, a simple blood test, and you engage in these 10 habits. So let's talk about the 10 habits to decrease, uh, retirement and aging that risk factor. And let's also talk about my grandmother who, um, was mean as a snake. I still remember what she said to me the first time I met her. So you're Danny's next victim. It was hilarious. I'm like, what? Like I almost ran right then.

So I was so in love with my grandfather. And he was married to this woman that was just never nice to him. And that just really upset me. But I scanned her at 92. She got depressed after she had a diverticulitis attack and was in the hospital and her cingulate gyrus worked way too hard so worried rigid and flexible things don't go your way you get upset and um and i put her on um a medicine that increased serotonin in her brain. Now I would have put her on a supplement to support serotonin. And she just became the nicest person.

It was really interesting. But in 92, her brain was much healthier than most people's brains. It was busy. Which explains your mom. And one of the strategies that she used, which she's always doing crossword puzzles, and she knitted. And knitting or crocheting is a fine motor coordination exercise. That's why my grandmother crocheted up until she died.

That activates the cerebellum that can actually help with cognitive functioning. So I'm a huge fan of that. All right, 10 strategies to reduce the risk of retirement and aging. Limit charred meats. So people like barbecuing. They like that sort of idea of barbecued chicken or grilled meat. You can get an indoor grill, like a grill for your cooktop inside, and you will limit that charred effect and still get your grilled meat. So what's the problem with charred

meat? Ages. So we're talking about retirement and that stands for advanced glycation and products, which they actually age. It promotes aging. Right. It promotes wrinkles in your skin. And the whole benefit of memory rescue, if you're vain like me, is you have prettier skin. Because your skin, largest organ in your body, the health of your skin is an outside reflection of the health of your brain. Okay. So limit charred meats, get your ferritin level checked. If your ferritin level is high, like mine has often been high, donate blood. Because when you donate blood, it decreases your ferritin levels. The other thing you can do is you can be blood by leeches. We're outside the spice market in Istanbul when we went to visit a couple of years ago, and they actually had these big jars of leeches. And I actually felt like I was back in the trauma

unit. We used leech therapy. I thought they were joking when I started working there, when they told me it was my day to learn leech therapy.'m like what like this like we're not in the 1700s why am I learning leech therapy they use it to increase blood flow like I'm like what are we talking about it's crazy we're not doing leeches but donate blood if your ferritin levels are high try a daily 12 to 16 hour fast. So I try to do this most days because what they found is fasting helps to decrease the beta amyloid plaque formation thought to be one of the causes of Alzheimer's disease. Now this is not hard and you won't feel deprived if you eat dinner at seven o'clock at night, don't eat until seven o'clock the next morning, if you can push it to 11 it's probably better for you um cloves they're super antioxidant they are the most potent yeah they have the most potent orac value which is just the value of uh

antioxidant potential so cloves so there's a lot of people who don't know how to cook with some of the things we're talking about. So believe it or not at night, I do tea every night. Cause I do like my favorite tea is sleepy tea, right? It helps relax me before bed and whatever. It's tastes delicious. But in my tea, I will often ground up some, like I'll just shave up some fresh ginger. I'll put some cayenne pepper in there sometimes. I sort of switch off between what I do. I'll put cloves in there. I put saffron.

I'll put a pinch of saffron in my tea. Right. We got a lot of saffron. You don't have to cook necessarily. Put it in your tea or some hot water. Right. Some of these spices are just amazing. There's a supplement I like, acetyl L-carnitine, which increases mitochondrial energy. Right.

And as we age, our mitochondria, the little power plants in our cells, become old and weaker and not as strong. And I know some people with mitochondrial dysfunction, and that's one of the things that they end up- Acetyl L-carnitine can be really great. We actually have a supplement called Brain and Memory Power Boost that has ginkgo, venpocetine, acetyl L-carnitine, and some of the other supplements we'll talk about as we go along. Add acetylcholine-rich foods. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that works to help with memory and learning.

And Hooperzine A is an acetylcholine supplement. It helps boost acetylcholine in the brain. That's also in brain and memory power boost. You can add acetylcholine-rich foods like shrimp. Shrimp is loaded with it. You want to stay connected. Aren't eggs also? Eggs are as well. You want to stay connected because also eggs are as well um you want to stay connected

because loneliness is a risk factor so going to church so lots of people write into me and say well i don't have family i live alone i don't have any family where i'm at churches synagogues like any sort of like small groups related to those types of organizations are so good for you if you are alone. Yeah, and if church isn't your thing, then volunteering at the Red Cross, volunteering at the hospital, look for ways to be connected. And a lot of people don't want to be connected to their families because they've been hurt or they don't have family. So one of my dear friends who, um, I just adore her, but she lost her daughter in a drunk driving accident. And she, um, not only started an organization, like she actually speaks now and she has a ministry, um, speaking and that's the

way she healed was to go out and teach and speak to mothers who, um, were in the same position, but she also is part of a mentoring group, sort of like, you know, big brother, that type of a thing. Only she mentors young girls who are in foster care or who have been removed from their homes. And she's able to mentor them so that they stay on track and go on to have a good life. And I mean, just do something that's meaningful in your life. We are not polar bears. See, if you're a polar bear, it doesn't matter, but human beings are meant to be connected. And the more connected we are with healthy people, uh, the more likely we are to have. And there's no better way to feel better than to help someone.

Music training has also been shown to be really helpful. We're actually coming out with a music album, Bright Minds, coming out, I think it's early November, late October, because listening to music and learning to play music has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus, that seahorse-shaped structure. I have to tell you something. So this is really interesting because, you know, Chloe, our daughter, is taking, she's actually producing, or yeah, we're producing right now

her first song. I'm so excited. It's amazing. She has some pretty cool coaches. So Roger Love is her voice coach. And then we've got a songwriting coach, Drew Lawrence. And she's got, you know, she's, she's doing keyboards and guitar and all this stuff. And they're producing her song. Well, he started a new program because he's had so many requests and it's amazing. High, these high level executives started flying in. He started this program. They're finding it helps them with their creativity and decreases their stress level.

So they're going to him to learn their creativity and decreases their stress level. So they're going to him to learn, yes, learning how to play and write to so write like songwriting. So like what Chloe does only he's doing it at an executive level because they find that not only does it increase their creativity, it decreases the stress because those are very high stress jobs. Crazy, right? I thought that was really cool. It increases the size of your hippocampus and you want to have hippocampal envy um and then you know one of the most important things under retirement and aging is start a daily practice of learning something new every day so new learning is is absolutely critical to keeping your brain healthy. So decrease the television, turn on a new learning program, music, a new hobby, traveling, a language,

something to get your brain working. Now, a lot of people go, oh, well, I do crossword puzzles, and that's why I keep my brain, and that's why I keep my brain, or that's how I keep my brain strong. But I've always thought if you just do crossword puzzles, it's like going to the gym, doing right bicep curls and then leaving. It's only working out one side of your brain. You want to do multiple things and in Memory Rescue, which you can pre-order, go to memoryrescue.com, that it will help you, give you all sorts of ideas on what are great new learning activities. Because there's all sorts of fun things. So think of something that you've

always wanted to do. Like I can't just continue, like you said, continue to take nutrition classes. That sort of doesn't stimulate that new part of my brain. I love doing that, but I need to do something else. I started taking survival classes and, you know, going to the range and doing like things that are sort of outside of your box, um, outside of your comfort zone. It's really fun to do. And it really stimulates that growth and that, you know, um, your just keeps you like thinking about new things all the time. It's really fun. That's how you keep your brain young and it's a very important part of memory rescue.

Stay with us. Coming up, we're going to talk about inflammation, the fire in your body you need to put out. 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.