Change Your Brain Every Day - Who is Tana Amen?

Episode Date: December 12, 2016

While many of you probably know Tana as the beautiful face beside me all the time, Tana is a person with a life so rich in experience and a story worth listening. So in today's episode, let me do the honor of introducing her to you and how she became the person that you know her today. 

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 Amon.

Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In this episode, I'm actually going to introduce you to Tana. Most people, they see her and they go, oh, she's beautiful. What would she know about being sick? How can she help me? And this is one very special woman that not only did I fall in love with her because she's beautiful and she's smart, she has just a huge heart to help people. And so can you begin to share really why you care about the brain, why you care about health and why you care about helping other people. Yeah, I can. Well, actually, I usually like to start with a little story because it's an interesting story. It's about a sick little girl who really wanted to be a doctor, two gorillas,

Bible-believing churches, and a group of drug addicts and criminals. But what's interesting is these stories all come together, and I use these stories to teach people how to become a warrior for their own health So, you know, you might not know by looking at me today because I am healthy the healthiest I've ever been but I was That sick little girl and my life was filled with a lot of trauma and drama So, you know a lot of drama. Yeah, lots of drama And in fact when I was four years old I still remember the day that my uncle was murdered in a drug deal, gone horribly wrong.

And I had a single working mother who- Who worked three jobs. Three jobs to put food on the table. And it was tough. Times were tough. I grew up very poor, but I was also sick a lot. So in the medical field, we have something that we call, we have a term we use for people who come in and out of the hospital. We call them frequent flyers. Well, I was a frequent flyer. I earned my miles the hard way. So I had upper and lower GIs by the time I was four years old, long list of health issues, first surgery when I was nine. And it's no sort of coincidence that if you have severe emotional trauma, that that then begins to affect your GI system, your immune system, and so on. And when we first met and I sort of

poked on that a little bit, you thought it was all nonsense. I learned to survive by becoming tough. At least I thought. Okay, so I thought I was surviving by being tough and building this wall. And as I became more savvy and I started to realize, oh, maybe there's a lot of connection to what's going on, what was happening in my life, and how it was manifesting itself. So I like to describe it like there was this white tiger hiding around every corner and you never really knew when something bad was going to jump out and bite you. So there was this chronic stress. You know, I was one of those kids that came home and locked myself in because we couldn't afford a babysitter. So I would soothe my stress with,

you know, my best friends, the tiger, the captain, the leprechaun and a few others thrown in for good measure. And they really, you know, we didn't know anything about nutrition and it wasn't for lack of love. It was for lack of knowledge and lack of, you know, really, we didn't know what we were doing and we didn't have a lot of money. And so I just grew up eating whatever was there. But that chronic stress and the really low quality food, it attacked my immune system.

So I was sick a lot. And then a few years later, my grandmother came to live with us. And it wasn't so that she could help take care of me. In fact, it was so that I could help take care of her. She had diabetes, and her diabetes had become unmanageable. So she actually went legally blind. And by the time I was 11, I was giving her insulin shots, which is really scary for a kid because I remember practicing on oranges and being told that if I gave her the wrong dose, I could make her really sick or, you know. Kill her. Yeah, I could kill her. And so that was a lot of responsibility for a kid. But when you grow up poor, you grow up fast and you just put on your game face and you do what you have to do. But I spent so much time

around doctors when I was a kid that I really wanted to be one. And unfortunately, life had a different plan for me. In my early 20s, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And it was just one of many things that had happened. But I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer that had been there for a long time and metastasized. So it came back three times. So what would have been a fairly simple procedure turned into not such a simple procedure. Right. They told you that, oh, this is a treatable cancer. There's a high survival rate. Well, unfortunately, it is a slow-growing cancer, but when it comes back three times, it changes the game a little bit. So yeah, so it changed my plans for medical school. And in fact, I became very depressed.

So that's... Which in part is when you don't have thyroid, because when you have thyroid cancer, they have to kill your thyroid gland. And back then, you would go a couple months, two to three months with no thyroid in your system before they would give you your radiation treatment. Which is why it's important to get your thyroid checked

and always have it optimized because without it being right, your brain is not right. Right. But at one point I was so sick that I was literally on nine medications. But a lot of the medications I was taking were to manage the side effects of other medications. Now, to me, this seemed crazy. It was very frustrating. And I remember going to the doctor and at one point just drawing a line and going, I can't do this. The quality of life is terrible. And so I was taking medications to go to sleep at night, to wake up during the day, to manage the heart rate. I was on heart medication. It was just crazy. So I went to the

doctor and I told him, I'm like, there's got to be a better way. I cannot do this. And this was a huge turning point in my life because he told me that I was in denial. He told me that it was genetic, that I should be grateful for the medications that I have available to me. Now, I want to be very clear. I am grateful for the medications that I have available to me. I'm a nurse. I get it. If I go into a trauma unit, I don't want someone offering me willow bark.

Okay, I understand. There's a time and a place for medications, and I'm grateful. But I am against the indiscriminate use of them without addressing lifestyle and just continuing to put me on more and more medications. And this guy, because I went to some of her appointments with her, candy's in the waiting room, cookies are in the waiting room. And I walked in the first time and I'm like, oh, we should leave because it doesn't fit. Yeah. And endocrinologist who deals with diabetes. And it's just this crazy disconnection between medicine and nutrition. It's like, well, why aren't they synonymous? Because most doctors get like 16 hours of nutrition. They're just not connected. They

treat illness. They don't work on wellness. It's a little crazy. And then what did he tell you? So he told me I was in denial and that maybe I should see someone to help me learn to accept it. And I looked at him and I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, you know, like a psychiatrist. That's when I almost fell out of my chair. So I guess we should clarify. It's not how we met. It's not how we met. Yes, I agree. I probably need a psychiatrist. I own it. But hey, I recommend them. I highly recommend them. But that's not how we met. But that was a really hard time. And it was a big turning point

because it's when I really started digging in myself. Now, if you know anything about me, I'm not one to really talk about my own story a lot. At least back then I wasn't. It was really hard for me to do that. It took me a lot of years to build this wall you know if I was gonna be like chipping away at it I'm like people have to hear your story because no one can relate to you know just a beautiful woman nobody can relate to that but when you really see what's underneath that the pain the struggle the hardship well now people can relate yeah the first time I was speaking and a woman said to me, she raised her hand, she said, how would you know what I'm going through?

You have no idea. Look at you. And I went, whoa. And that's when you told me you're going to have to start sharing your story, which is not an easy thing to do. But little by little, I realized that it really does help people. If it helps anybody go, hey, if you can do it, maybe there's an answer. Maybe there's a way. Then I'm willing to. Well, and that's how you actually become more real to the people in your life. So many of us

want to just present a perfect face. And a long time ago, I realized, well, nobody can relate to me. So if you've read most of my books, I talk about all the craziness in myself and in my family. Now I get to share her craziness with you too. So like I said, I did grow up with a lot of drama, but it started actually way back. So when I was 15 years old, actually, another interesting thing that happened. I was 15 years old and I was actually walking to high school and a guy grabbed me and he dragged me down an alley and he nearly raped me. It was a big struggle. It was intense. I fought really hard. I got away from him. And I decided then, I spent about a few days being scared. And I don't like being scared. It's really not comfortable for me to feel like a victim or to feel scared. And so

I'll do almost anything to get out of feel scared. And so I'll do almost anything to get out of that mode. And so I decided then and there I was never going to be a victim. And so I learned how to fight. And I like this concept of being a warrior. So I learned how to fight. But when I got cancer, it was a totally different fight. You know, the attacker was inside my own cells and I felt completely betrayed. How do you fight back? I didn't know what to fight back. I didn't know what to do. And I got knocked to the mat more than once and it was hard. But you know, I realized at some point it kicked back in, you know, that training, I use that as a metaphor for life. I use my martial arts training as a metaphor for life. You know, the difference between a winner and a loser, the winner gets up one more time.

You might fall down seven times, but you get up eight times and you just have to keep doing it. And so I decided to take on that metaphor from martial art in my everyday life and become a warrior for my health. So, you know, these guys had to go. So they're not my friends. And, you know, it's interesting

because the food industry does not have your best interest at heart. They look harmless enough, right? So they come marching into your living room anytime they want to. You just turn on your TV and they got a billion dollar bankroll. So this is... And they're going after your children. This is war.

So I think of this as war and we need warriors. And when you eat foods that are highly processed, high glycemic, genetically modified, low fiber, you are at risk to become as sick or sicker than I was. So I deal with a lot of people who are sicker than I was. So you need to understand that food is medicine or it's poison and everything you put on the end of your fork matters. And sorry, I'm a little wound up, but it's true. She scares me too. People don't know she has a black belt in taekwondo. She's getting ready to get her second black belt in Kenpo karate.

There's absolutely no abuse happening in my house. At least not to me. So, yeah. So you've got to be a warrior for your health. And food is medicine or it's poison. So you remember those gorillas I talked about in the beginning? Well, their names are B-Back and McCullough. I just think they're so handsome. But these guys are cool guys. They live at the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo. And they are what you call warehoused

gorillas. That's what you call gorillas that live in zoos. And unlike wild gorillas, the number one cause of death for warehoused gorillas is heart disease. So wild gorillas don't die of chronic illnesses like diabetes or heart disease. They die of acute illnesses or they're poached. So I got to interview these zoologists over at the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo. Yeah, that was really fun. It was fun. And I talked to them and they explained to me that heart disease is the number one cause of death. These guys were barely middle aged. They were both dying of heart disease. And it made them pause and start to think why. So zoologists for a long time have been perplexed by this. They didn't really know why.

And the zoologists over at the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo began to suspect their diet. Because what a lot of people don't know is that gorillas that are in zoos are most commonly fed nutritional cookies. You know, it just seems a little crazy. And it reminds me of children's vitamins, right? Right. Vitamins and sugar. How does that make sense? Yeah. Why are we doing that? But gorillas don't eat grains or starch or sugar in the wild, not at all. So they decided to start replacing their diet with their natural diet of wild greens and nuts and seeds, flax, bamboo, and berries. And they scattered it around their habitat. So they used to gobble up the cookies. And now it started taking them with their new diet

about 75% of the day to forage for this new diet. And get this, their new diet was double the calories of the cookies. Double the calories of the cookies. And within one year, both gorillas lost 65 pounds each, eating double the calories because they were high-quality calories. And we're going to talk about that at another point, what that means. Does it mean you can get to go eat whatever you want? No. But we'll talk about the calorie issue. You want to be calorie smart. But when push comes to shove, always the quality of the calories matter the most.

But still, you have to be smart. Yeah, and we'll talk about what that means. You don't eat too much. I think of calories sort of like money. But it comes from different countries. So the currency doesn't have the same exchange rate. You want to be smart. But the most important thing is to think of the quality of the calories that you put in. Because you get a higher exchange rate for some. So that's how I think of it. But anyway, so within one year, the gorillas lost 65 pounds each. But what's really cool and important, and this is so apropos,

is that B-back reversed his heart disease and McCullough radically slowed the progression of his heart disease. Now, another interesting thing. So you're not stuck with what you have. You can make it better by making better choices. Right. And another interesting fact about warehouse gorillas, almost all warehouse gorillas also suffer from these weird neurotic behaviors. They pull out their hair and they eat it and they regurgitate their food up to four times an hour and re-eat it. And Bebalk and McCullough were no exception. Those behaviors are not seen in the

wild. Ever. They're never seen in wild gorillas. And so that has totally perplexed the zoologist. But after they changed their diet, those neurotic behaviors completely stopped and be back in McCullough. So, of course, it made me think of, well, oh, my gosh, what about the patients we see that come in with similar behaviors? And I get it. Correlation is not causation. But we see these patients that come in with these similar behaviors of pulling out their

hair, regurgitating their food, being anxious and neurotic. And, you know, so were the gorillas being, were they crazy or were they being poisoned? But it reminds me of this sign we saw. Do you remember the sign we saw when we were in Monterey? Right, this is on 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach. Tan and I were planting planting a brain healthy treatment center, a drug treatment center in Monterey. And we were teaching them to be brain healthy. And we had a break. So we took the drive

and 17 mile drive. And then we took a hike and I saw this sign and I had to take a picture of it. Because if you read it, it says, please don't feed the animals. Bread and snacks are unhealthy for squirrels, deer, and birds. And gorillas, and children. And humans. Handouts can lead to malnutrition and starvation. The animals need their natural diets. Let them find their own foods, which totally reminded me of the gorillas. But just down the street, there are all these fast food places, which is not our natural diet. It's not our natural diet.

If you actually go on the web, pick your favorite fast food meal, and then look at the ingredients in it, it will horrify you. There's many things you can't even pronounce. You know, many of you have grandparents that came from other countries. They would be horrified at the foods that we eat here.

It's crazy. So even still, other countries oftentimes don't eat what we eat. But like Cookie Monster, Be Back in McCullough, were grumpy for about a week. They missed their sugar. They were a little irritable for about a week looking for it. And you know what? They got over it and they got healthy. And so that's really what we're trying to teach you and help you with. And we will hold your hand. You will get over it and you will get healthy. And it takes three to seven days. So it's not that hard. It's a paradigm shift. They didn't even miss the cookies after that, but they got healthy. Heart disease went away. Their neurotic behaviors went away. You know, so it's, it's worth that little bit of effort. So we know that food is medicine or poison and yet people in hospitals,

churches, I mean, we've seen that, churches, drug rehab centers, prisons, you know, they're fed the worst foods. You know, you got to wonder why. It's just, it's crazy. These are the people who need it the most. So as we think about your story, that it really starts with your grandmother and her struggles. And then your mother having to work three jobs in order to survive. You grow up in chronic chaos and stress. And you end up helping to take care of your grandmother, which is probably one of the reasons you became a nurse. Most people don't know that Tana's a neurosurgical ICU nurse, which meant highly skilled, took care of the worst patients in the hospital. I mean, the patients, brain tumors, gunshot wounds to the head and so on. Train wrecks, like for real. For real train wrecks, right. But she trained and she worked

at Loma Linda. And Loma Linda is in San Bernardino County, which has terrible smog. But it's actually part of the blue zones where people live longer than anywhere in the world. Yeah, it was very interesting. So those of you who don't know Loma Linda, it's a Seventh-day Adventist institution. Now, I wasn't raised Seventh-day Adventist, but I liked going to college there very much. Their lifestyle is very wholesome. It's very healthy. And I didn't really understand it at first.

You know, I used to think, okay, it's different, different from what I was used to. I'd walk onto campus with my little thermos of coffee. And, you know, there's no coffee anywhere around on campus or anywhere, nowhere. There was no meat. There was nothing. I mean, it was just a very, they were very health conscious. And they were serious. They were not kidding because it's part of their religion. They were serious. And they also lived longer. And well, and it's also about temperance. So it's about their nutrition and exercise and living this life of temperance,

meaning that you balance things. So manage your stress and things like that. And so I used to, now here I am working on one of the toughest units in the hospital. And I would occasionally get these patients in that were 98, 103, and they had no health history, no previous history of anything had ever gone wrong. And they've got no lines on their face. They looked peaceful. They've got no wrinkles. And I'm like, that is just so weird. It's eerie. It's a little creepy, really. It's like they looked a little Stepford to me, you know? It's like, what's going on? What are they drinking around here? And it turns out they were almost always the ones who were Seventh-day Adventists that had been practicing this lifestyle

most of their lives. And so no smoking. Soestyle can make a huge difference in how you look on the inside and the outside and how you feel. And that's when I began to put it together. So, you know, in fact, most of the patients we get in their 30s, they just looked like they had been beaten up. But these patients had a very different demeanor about them and just their health history and everything. And I really began to put that together and go, huh, okay, I'm kind of smart. There's got to be something to this. So if we go back, because I want to make this connection. So the struggles with your grandmother, diabetes, obesity, mental health issues, your mom having to work so hard. And we've talked about her ADD and some of our public television shows, which is just

hysterical about how when we met and thinking about how that affects people in your family. And then your struggles with cancer and some of the emotional issues that went along with that. But ultimately, it's really not about your grandmother, your mother, and you. It really becomes about Chloe. Generations of me and you. And our grandbabies. So talk about that a little bit. Well, it really, I mean, so epigenetics is a really interesting concept. So epigenetics really means that it isn't just about you, that you're affected not just by your genes, but you're affected by your environment and what you put into your body.

So. So epigenetics is an interesting term. So everybody sort of understands genetics, you know, what did I inherit from my mom and dad, the color of my eyes, the fact that I don't have much hair, and tendencies toward heart disease, diabetes, and so on. But really it's just the last 20 years or so, we've been talking about it's not just your genes.

Right. That your habits turn on or off certain genes. So that's what epigenetics is. And your environmental surroundings. That habits and environment turn on or off certain genes that make illnesses more or less likely not only in you. You pass them on. But in generations of you.

So and actually your habits, you can pass on, you can turn and turn off genes that you pass on to your offspring as well. It's not just if you did drugs. So when we got together, Chloe was too cute and she loved me, which just totally surprised her. And as this journey of health that I think one of the most beautiful things I see is Chloe getting involved in this. And I'd love for you to tell the red bell pepper story. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, it was really fun. So you always wonder if what you're saying, you know, rubs off on your kid, especially when you have a very strong willed kid like I do. Red hair, both of them. God's warning signal. So, you know, I'm you know, when your kids are little, I just want to preface this because I think we'll do a show just on this. But when your kids are little, you have a lot of control. You know, I do the grocery shopping. I do the cooking at that time. And, you know, it's there really wasn't a lot of room for argument because there's nothing else in the

house. But as they get older, you have to really make sure that your kids are getting that internal voice that's talking to them on their own. And it's not always perfect, not even with a kid who grows up in an environment that's really healthy. So you need them to start really listening to themselves. And we'll do a show on that. But at one point, I'm wondering, you know, is my daughter really understanding this? Because she loves to push back just for the sake of pushing back. And where did she? I don't know. Stop saying that. So anyways, we're, you know, we cook in the kitchen together. We do healthy scavenger hunts, all these things. And one day we were hiking and it was a tough hike for her, it was a really tough hike. She was only six or seven anyways. And so she was huffing and puffing. She's sweating. And we get to the top of the hill. And I was so proud of her because she

didn't complain the whole time. And she's just sweating. And I looked at her and I said, wow, Chloe, I'm like, you're a tough cookie. She puts her hands on her hips. She says, I don't want to be a tough cookie. I want to be a tough red bell pepper. And that was one of those moments where I went, aha. Okay. So what we're doing is rubbing off at some level. Well, and then there was at Christmas time. Remember the Christmas cookie story? The Christmas cookie.

So they're in class and it's Christmas time and they're handing out cookies. And they said, all the kids can come up and take one. No, you can take two. You could take two cookies. You could eat one then and save one. And she didn't want to eat one. And so they were telling the kids, eat a cookie now. And so because the teacher didn't want them to eat them both.

And she didn't want them to be walking around with these two cookies. So she's like, I want you to eat a cookie now. And then I want you to save the other cookie until later in the afternoon. She didn't want them to be walking around with these two cookies. So she's like, I want you to eat a cookie now, and then I want you to save the other cookie until later in the afternoon. She didn't want the sugar high. She was telling me this is like one of the worst times of the year for her. And so Chloe wouldn't go take a cookie. And so she wouldn't eat one. And I thought she was not eating it because I was there.

But in fact, she was actually just not eating it. And so I told her, I said, Chloe, you can go have a cookie. It's okay. It's because I'm here. You know, don't worry about it. You know, it's your day. You figure it out. You know, you can make your own decision. Go have a cookie. And she looked at me. She's like, it's not because of you. She goes, I'm not eating a cookie right now because I don't want to feel bad. She's like, I will take it. I'll eat it after lunch when I get home after I've already eaten something else. And she said, I'll eat one cookie then. And so what I liked was that she didn't give into the pressure of all the kids eating cookies or even being told

specifically, go get a cookie and eat it by someone in authority. So one of the little lies people tell themselves is I'm obese or I have diabetes or I have hypertension because it's in my family. And it's that lie that you tell yourself that actually prevents you from getting well. Because what we're changing is this genetic family history of illness that can definitely turn into a family history of health by making the right choices. And I think of the Indians that I've consulted with. So I've been a consultant to the Yakima Indian Reservation. And the fact is, before we introduced awful food to the Indians and alcohol, that they weren't obese, that they didn't have diabetes.

No, they were gatherers and hunters. They had some of the best physiques as far as athletic physiques of any people on the planet. So quite some time ago, as a result of some of this craziness that I grew up with, I started packing my lunch. I realized that I could not leave my health in the hands of anyone else. I have to be my own advocate and a warrior for my health. And I started packing my lunch and taking it with me every day to the hospital. And I was exercising every day and I was getting into really good shape and feeling pretty good.

And I remember one of the surgeons, and this is the part that really struck me, is he's a physician. He's a surgeon, right? And he was overweight and I caught him smoking outside one day. Anyways, he saw me on the unit with my little lunch box and he said, you know, all that healthy living is only going to add like four or five years to your life max. And I looked at him and I went, you don't get it. Look around you. Like it's not about the number of years that I live, especially with what I've been through. It's not the number of years. It's the quality of the years that I'm alive. So if I have

a short life, I want to have a really kick butt life. Pardon my French, but I have a mission and I want to share that mission. And all of you have a mission. So maybe you've discovered it already. Maybe you haven't, but you have one. And if you feel well and you're healthy, you will not only discover that mission, but you will have the energy to just take that mission and rock it. And that's really what I want for people. And that's why I'm so passionate about this. And it's one of the reasons we do this show for you. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. We can prove it. Take care of it. 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.