Change Your Brain Every Day - Why a ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach to Mental Health Doesn’t Work

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

When Dr. Daniel Amen first began to use SPECT imaging to look at people’s brains to help diagnoses, he had no idea how radical a change it would be for his psychiatric evaluations. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Amen and his wife Tana discuss some of the most important lessons learned from over 150,000 scans.

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. Thanks for staying with us and feel better fast and make it last. This week, we're going to talk about the X-Factor. What are the big lessons that I've learned from the brain imaging work that we've done and that Tana's line, because she's been involved in this for goodness, 13 years. I love this one testimonial,

great practical wisdom from challenged and inspired. Okay. Just like visualize you being a little wizard. It's not hard, is it? I've been called an elf before. An elf wizard. Who would call you an elf? Have listened to Daniel for 10 years or more, and his insights are spot on. So that's something my wife would say.

It is true. It's true. All right. This week, we're going to talk about the X factor. So what is that? It's the practical lessons from 150,000 scans. And it's, it's just consumed me for decades. So really there's two things that have consumed me, Tana, my family, and this work. And the imaging, it just changed everything.

And what I learned really early on is nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. I told my dad I was going to be a psychiatrist in 1980, and he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor. Why I wanted to be a nut doctor, hang out with nuts all day long. Your dad. I can so hear your dad. It's so rude. I can hear your dad. But, you know, years later, I sort of get where he's coming from.

And you almost canceled your first date with me when you found out I was a psychiatrist. I did. What was that about? Have you met a lot of psychiatrists? But the truth is, I say that jokingly but yes i have almost 40 that work with me and yeah but they're different i know but they're different i have to say we have some amazing psychiatrists honestly where that comes from is because i have been hurt by a psychiatrist most people in my family have been hurt by psychiatrists and we've told some of the

stories i haven't told all of them um but we've told some of the stories. I haven't told all of them. But we've told some of those stories. And that's where that comes from. And so it always just felt like this like woo-woo kind of practice where it bothered me. And so that's where your dad gets that from. And so you're a highly educated, medically trained neurosurgical ICU. But I deal with neurosurgeons. I deal with cardiothoracic surgeons. And you still had that thought. Right. Because I deal with neurosurgeons. I deal with cardiothoracic surgeons. And you still had that thought. Right. Because I deal with

data. So I realized a long time ago, and I can't tell you the countless number of people who've told their families, I'm not going to see no damn psychiatrist because I'm not crazy. And it's associated with shame, with stigma,

and it almost stains a person's soul that you have a mental health issue. So nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. No one wants to be labeled as defective or abnormal. Well, and when I met you on our first date, so I had worked for Medtronic, which was a medical device company. My, my, what I did with them was I worked with deep brain stimulators. I was a neurosurgical ICU nurse. So like I said, like data and science. And, and so I'm taught, I'm like, what am I going to say to a psychiatrist? Seriously? I'm used to only calling you guys when I need to like,

someone's climbing out of bed and I just need some Haldol. We called it vitamin H. So, and it's like, go away. So that's that I'm thinking to myself, this is just going to be one of those, like, you're going to go, okay, so tell me about your life. And I'm like, okay, can you read my mind right now? So that's what I thought it was going to be like.

And, and you wouldn't want to have wanted to read my mind. But anyways. What were you thinking? I'm like, seriously curious now. Wouldn't it wouldn't have been nice, but so, but it didn't turn out that way. Cause what you do is so different that I was instantly like intrigued. And, and, and for me, I'm like, you know, and you, you're very upfront. You were telling me about the controversy about what you do right away. But I was like, that doesn't make sense. Like what you do made sense to me right away. In fact, I was fascinated by it.

So for those of you listening that don't know, if you come to Amen Clinics, we want to look at your brain. It's one of the first things we want to do. Of course, we'll talk to you and we'll put it in the context of your life. But I'm like, why not? But without looking, how do you know what to do for people? Well, my thought was, why isn't everybody doing this? So nobody wants to see a psychiatrist.

No one wants to be labeled as defective or abnormal, borderline, bipolar, depressed, schizophrenic. But everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental health was brain health? And so one of the big lessons I've learned is we have a serious marketing problem. Yeah. That by labeling things as, quote, mental illnesses, when in fact they are brain illnesses. The science is much more solid with changes in your brain associated with antisocial personality disorder or aggression or depression or anxiety or panic, that if we just shifted it to helping people have better brains, that they wouldn't want that. Who wouldn't want that?

So what if we reimagined mental health as brain health? And I'm going to spend the rest of my life helping people end this concept of mental illness and start getting their brains right. Makes sense to me. And I learned that from the imaging work I've done. So we started with quantitative EEG, looking at the electrical activity in your brain in the late 1980s. And then in 1991, we went to SPECT. SPECT is a study that looks at blood flow and activity,

looks at how your brain works. And it just, it caused a revolution in my life. And the first lesson I learned is that how we diagnose people is outdated because we're not looking at the brain. And if you don't look at the brain, symptoms will never tell you if the brain has had a traumatic brain injury, if it's toxic, if it works too hard. And you don't discount the symptoms, but you have to take it all into, take it all. They're all pieces of the puzzle. So Tom Insull, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, the former director, said it's much harder to fix something if you don't know what is going wrong.

And, you know, how most people are diagnosed is I have this symptom, I'm depressed. So they give them a diagnosis with the same name, oh, you're depressed. And then they give a medicine for depression or you go, I'm anxious. So they go, oh, you're anxious. And they give you an anti-anxiety medication that has been shown to increase the risk of dementia. Or you have attentional problems and so they go, oh, you have ADD, attention deficit disorder. I mean, you follow the insanity in this. Or my favorite one to explain this is you explode intermittently. IED. You have intermittent explosive disorder. Really? There's a diagnostic category called IED? And so what does that mean?

It means you exploded. I mean, there's just insanity with this. The second big lesson I learned is that all diagnoses, all psychiatric diagnoses, major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia are not single or simple disorders. They all have multiple types that require their own treatment. So can I give you like an example of why it was so frustrating? I mean, I can give you billions of, not billions, but I can give you multiple examples of my family, but personally.

So I go to, I'm feeling like life's not worth living, right? I wasn't having thoughts of that I should kill myself, but I could not find any reason that life was worth living. And so I'm feeling just terrible. I can't get out of bed. So I go to a psychiatrist. He says, we should put you on Prozac. I'm like, okay, I'll do anything at this point. Like I will do anything. Just get out of bed in the morning and think that life is worth living. Puts me on Prozac. Within a couple of days, I'm like, all right, I don't feel like dying. So that's a good thing. Don't feel like dying, feel kind of numb, but I don't feel like dying. But I noticed that within a couple of weeks, I'm like, you know, I don't feel like I have a, like, I'm not me. And my, I'm not as thoughtful about things. My conscience isn't quite as like,

I'm a pretty anxious person and I have, I have a pretty strong conscience and I'm not feeling that. So, so I go back and I'm like, you know, I'm not, I'm just, I don't feel like myself. I'm feeling like I didn't use the word impulsive, but that's really what it was. And so I'm like, something's not quite right. I'm like, but I'm like, but I don't feel like dying. I mean, I don't feel like that, but I don't feel, I also don't feel like myself. He goes, well, well, I think we should try doubling the dose. Now, what I want to point out, never asked me about my thyroid, which was what it was by the way, never asked me, oh, have you had a head injury?

Which might not have helped because I didn't think I did, but, but he didn't ask me about a head injury. He didn't ask me, you know, what trauma have you recently been through? I mean, he asked me about my past. Did you have, you know, an emotional, you know, childhood, uh, or traumatic childhood, those kinds of questions. But he, but I, none of the stuff about like, did you have a head injury? None of those things, which he just said, maybe we should try doubling your dose. And that's what happens. People often in a seven minute office visit end up on medication that once you start it, you can't stop. Well, and then I felt like I was going crazy. So I took myself off of it. I actually called him. He's like, well, we still not might not have the right dose. And I went, you're a quack. And so I took myself off of it.

So that's, that was why. And when we initially scanned you, we realized it was not the right. Well, and that was, that was the, that was, that was the part of the story that I didn't add on. When you scan me and you realize that I have sleepy frontal lobes, the exact wrong medication would have been Prozac. Right. So. How do you know unless you look? I mean, I'm just not that good at reading people's brains.

I'm not good at reading your mind. And I have no idea how to read your brain unless I actually look at it. And so the second lesson is all psychiatric disorders. So you are depressed and sometimes depression goes from your brain working too hard or from not working hard enough. Like with thyroid problems. Like you have thyroid problems. Sometimes it can be from a head injury or sometimes it can be from toxic exposure. Or all of the above. And so I often say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a map is worth a thousand pictures. A map tells you where you are and gives you direction

on how to get to where you want to go. And without a map, you're lost. And so when we come back, we're going to talk about more big lessons I've learned from Aminogene that can help you have a better brain and a better life to feel better faster. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at aminclinics.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.