This week of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast continues our limited series from The Brain Health Revolution 6-Week Live Class. In this episode, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen discuss how you can use an integrative approach to brain health to get the best results. In short, you must take a full body approach and treat all of the risk factors for cognitive decline to keep your brain and body strong.
Dr Daniel Amen: Welcome to The Brain Warrior’s Way podcast. I’m Dr. Daniel Amen.
Tana 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.
Dr Daniel Amen: The Brain Warrior’s Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics where we have been transforming lives for 30 years. Using tools like brain SPECT imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit Amenclinics.com.
Tana Amen: The Brain Warrior’s 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
Dr Daniel Amen: Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amen.
Tana Amen: And I’m Tana Amen.
Dr Daniel Amen: We’re so excited you’re with us. For this week series, what we’re doing is we’re playing the live class from the end of mental illness.
Tana Amen: We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class and the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you and we hope that you will join us in the challenge.
Dr Daniel Amen: Hey everybody, welcome back.
Tana Amen: Week two.
Dr Daniel Amen: We are so excited.
Tana Amen: So great.
Dr Daniel Amen: We had over 14,500 people watch week one.
Tana Amen: It’s amazing, yeah.
Dr Daniel Amen: So invite all of your friends. We have questions.
Tana Amen: We have lots of questions and some of them are really good so we need to make sure we get to some of them.
Dr Daniel Amen: And we’re going to have more challenges for you. We made it super easy for you. You know, like day one, tell somebody. The little tiny habit is as good for your brain or bad for it. Some of you actually went to your doctor to get your lab work done and as I predicted they told you you didn’t need it because you didn’t have a problem.
Tana Amen: We have that every class that happens.
Dr Daniel Amen: It is.
Tana Amen: Yeah.
Dr Daniel Amen: And so, you know, say, “Hey this is a collaboration. I would like these done please.” And if they still say no, find another doctor. Your doctor is not your mother.
Tana Amen: You don’t even have to have it anymore. There are sites now, places you can go and have your labs drawn.
Dr Daniel Amen: Yeah, but it’s better to work with a healthcare professional because if things come back and they’re not optimal-
Tana Amen: Oh no, I agree. But I’m just saying they don’t get to be your boss so you can actually get them done.
Dr Daniel Amen: You get to be my boss.
Tana Amen: It’s true. But you get to be my boss too.
Dr Daniel Amen: So that was one of the questions.
Tana Amen: So one of them I want to clarify. Someone asked, they were confused about my advice not never to drink juice. She said ever even fresh squeezed juice, celery juice? Let me clarify it and if I didn’t say this, it’s my fault. No fruit juice. So no fruit juice. Celery juice is great. I love my green juices all the time. I love wheat grass, celery juice. I get my big green goddess, you know, goddess of greens, whatever it’s called. So yeah, no, green juices are great. So I apologize if I didn’t say that, if I didn’t clarify that, but fruit juices, fresh squeezed, no.
Dr Daniel Amen: So I love this question.
Tana Amen: Eat the fruit.
Dr Daniel Amen: Can an older person like me, say 49 years old-
Tana Amen: I know I’m like, “Oh my-”
Dr Daniel Amen: Still see improvement if I start now? I’m afraid of irreparable damage.
Tana Amen: This person just called me old. Just called me old.
Dr Daniel Amen: Well you old and me ancient.
Tana Amen: Right, basically.
Dr Daniel Amen: And in our NFL work, we actually had players who were in their eighties and they still showed significant improvement on our program.
Tana Amen: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr Daniel Amen: And so that is our hope for you. And remember the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health. And we’re a week closer to the release of The End of Mental Illness. Those of you who preordered the book, thank you so much. I would just dearly love it if you gave it as a gift to people who needed it.
Dr Daniel Amen: So this week is about creating bright minds and those of you that listen to the podcast or have read memory rescue, you know this idea if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, if it’s headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind.
Dr Daniel Amen: Now I’m struggling. There we go. Okay.
Dr Daniel Amen: So this is what we’re doing this week. We’re actually not going to do all of them because we’re going to take a deep dive into each one of the these risk factors. And as I figured this out, I was so excited. This is functional medicine made super simple and I first created it with my book Memory Rescue. And you remember in Memory Rescue, I talk about the hippocampus, which is Greek for seahorse or sea monster and because it’s got that shape. And for Christmas, two or three years ago, you actually went to Laguna Beach, found an artist that you liked-
Tana Amen: I commissioned a painting.
Dr Daniel Amen: And commissioned a painting on the hippocampus which we should actually show.
Tana Amen: It basically looks like this abstract modern art, but it’s hippocampus. Yeah.
Dr Daniel Amen: And it’s beautiful. But the hippocampus. Why do I love the hippocampus? I mean not as much as Tana, but why do I love the hippocampus? Because it’s one of the few parts of the brain that makes new cells every day. So I was just in a new docu-series on STEM cells.
Tana Amen: That was so fun.
Dr Daniel Amen: Well that’s a different one.
Tana Amen: Oh, the one last night was so fun.
Dr Daniel Amen: The one last night was so fun. We’ll talk about that.
Tana Amen: Yeah.
Dr Daniel Amen: But in the new docu-series on STEM cells and in your brain, people have had the wrong idea about the brain for a long time. It’s like the brain cannot change. It absolutely can change. We see it all the time.
Tana Amen: Yeah. That once they die, they die and that’s it.
Dr Daniel Amen: Right. And you were, you are a neurosurgical IC nurse.
Tana Amen: And that’s what I was taught. It’s like once it dies, it dies. It’s it.
Dr Daniel Amen: Wow. And I guess it was about 20 years ago we realized the brain continues to make new cells, especially in the hippocampus throughout life, about 700 new cells every day. So the hippocampus is Greek for seahorse. It’s like you have 700 new baby sea horses being born every day. And so Chloe, who’s 16, who I got to hang out with yesterday and today. I’m 65 and hers tend to stay around and get absorbed into the big seahorse. And so her mood and memory is sharp. Where the older you get, say 49 or 65, they don’t tend to stay around. Why? Because the older you get the lower blood flow you have and more toxins in your body that are actually killing the baby seahorses. And so if you want to love your brain and love your hippocampus, your seahorses, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And about halfway through Memory Rescue, I realize, “Oh, this is not just to rescue your memory. That this is a program that rescues your mood, your focus, your the health, really the vitality of your mind.”
Tana Amen: One thing I like about that concept is it actually feeds into one of our questions, which I really love because someone said, “When asking myself, is this good for my brain? What if I don’t know the answer to that question? Is there some resource that can help me? I’m especially interested to know how different food choices may impact my brain health.”
Tana Amen: So I like that because basically the information… The answer to that question is in BRIGHT MINDS. Is it good for my brain or bad for my brain? Well, is it affecting those 11 risk factors? And you have a whole chapter on food anyways. And so, which my cookbook, your book, the chapter on your book. So the cookbook helps you to put it into practical, you know-
Dr Daniel Amen: Right. The Brain Warrior’s Way Cookbook.
Tana Amen: Right.
Dr Daniel Amen: I think is one of your best book-
Tana Amen: But the information on what to do for food is in the book.
Dr Daniel Amen: And in The End of Mental Illness, there’s a chapter called Food Made Insanely Simple. And some people pushed back against insanely-
Tana Amen: No, I like it.
Dr Daniel Amen: But it’s just like you got to make it easy.
Tana Amen: Or made sanely simple.
Dr Daniel Amen: And there’s a whole section is this, you know, it’s like eat this, don’t eat that.
Tana Amen: Right.
Dr Daniel Amen: And most of you will understand if generally it’s colorful and not artificial, so Skittles don’t count. If it’s colorful, high in fiber, low in sugar, it’s likely going to be good for you. So let’s get started because I can go on and on forever. Almost all of these risk factors are preventable or treatable. So that’s the good news.
Dr Daniel Amen: And when we taught a similar class a couple of years ago, I guess about three years ago now, we studied it. So we want all of you actually to go to the week one and week two surveys and fill them out. So they’ve been loaded. You might have to refresh this page.
Tana Amen: But they wanted me to remind you, don’t fill out week two until you have done all of the stuff on week two. So after today, and you’ve done the things on week two, don’t fill out that survey until after you’ve completed the tasks for week two.
Dr Daniel Amen: Yes. And that’s very important, especially for those of you who want to be in the challenge. You know, I know some of you, you’re not really interested in the prizes and the challenge and you just want to get this information.
Tana Amen: But some of you want the five thousand dollars.
Dr Daniel Amen: Some of you want the prizes, the free evaluation, a year’s worth of supplements and all of those things. You need to fill out the surveys because we want to track. And when we did this before, what we found is people had better energy, mood, focus, memory, and sleep with reductions in stress, weight and pain. So I mean that’s what we’re trying to help you get over the next six weeks. So that’s our goal for you. And you know, our big sneaky goal is we want to end mental illness and how do you end mental illness? You create a revolution in brain health. So in order to do that you need brain warriors. You need people who are armed, prepared, and aware to win the fight of their lives. And every day I open the not the paper anymore, but a news site and you just see all these toxic things. There was an article last week about the water in many cities in the United States is actually filled with toxins that once you ingest them, they actually never leave your body.
Tana Amen: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr Daniel Amen: That’s a war, right? It’s a weapon of mass destruction.
Tana Amen: That’s so true.
Tana Amen: If you’re enjoying The Brain Warrior’s 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, feel free to give us a review or five star rating as that helps others find the podcast.
Dr Daniel Amen: If you’re considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a ten percent discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.
