What Is Crocus Sativus & How Does It Help Treat Depression?

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: Welcome back. This podcast, we're going to do brain in the news. There's so much to talk about.
Tana Amen: So much going on.
Dr. Daniel Amen: But we hope we're going to get to four studies. Before we do that, let me read another review. "I've found Dr. Amen's video, The Most Important Lesson From 83,000 Scans, in my psych class. I'm doing a self study on how my diet affects my anxiety and trying to keep up with the course plus full time work. I've lost 11 pounds in five days ...
Tana Amen: Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen: ... just ditching my daily iced coffees." Thank you. "The combination of Dr. Amen's obesity scan and the podcast with Dr. Lustig's leptin fructose description was the aha moment for me. You both need Superman capes." Thank you, thank you, thank you. "The fat is scared off me and my brain finally doesn't hurt straining to understand my schoolwork." From Gigi.
Tana Amen: Thank you, Gigi. That's a really important point, that as you get healthy, just as you get healthy and you clean up your diet, your brain fog goes away. We hear that all the time. People can think better. Yeah, It's really interesting. Awesome. What have you got?
Dr. Daniel Amen: You have...
Tana Amen: I do.
Dr. Daniel Amen: ... an article.
Tana Amen: New lawsuit alleges that Juul sold 1 million contaminated pods. The company's CEO allegedly said that half of its customers would be too drunk and vaping to notice.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Oh no.
Tana Amen: Yeah. But she got fired though, right? The e-cigarette company Juul allegedly sold a million contaminated vape liquid pods earlier this year without telling customers or issuing a recall, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a former company executive. That's insane. The reason this bothers me is because kids are the number one market for this. And when my daughter went to, she used to attend a local high school here with almost 3,000 kids, there were over 3000 kids, and they had to search the lockers because it was such an epidemic and all the toilets got stopped up that day. All of them.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Why?
Tana Amen: Because they flushed their Juuls down the toilet.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Oh no.
Tana Amen: Yes, oh no. So, the lawsuit.
Dr. Daniel Amen: The incidents of nicotine use in children went up 36% last year.
Tana Amen: Because they made them desirable.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Right. And whenever you do bubblegum flavor, you know they're targeting children.
Tana Amen: Right. So the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California alleges the company has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, children, many of them children and teens. Yes, that's what they said.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Wow.
Tana Amen: Yep. So.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Vaping is not in your best interest and it's not in the best interest of children, for sure.
Tana Amen: Yeah. No, he was terminated because he failed to demonstrate the leadership qualities needed in his role.
Dr. Daniel Amen: On a more positive note, crocus sativus, saffron, there's a brand new study.
Tana Amen: Is that the name for it?
Dr. Daniel Amen: Crocus sativus, saffron, the world's most expensive spice in a group of older people, so 50 older outpatients with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to either saffron, 60 milligrams a day, or sertraline, Zoloft, 100 milligrams a day, good dose, for six consecutive weeks. They were equally effective.
Tana Amen: Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen: And this is like the 17th study on depression-
Tana Amen: So this is not like...
Dr. Daniel Amen: ... that shows-
Tana Amen: It's becoming well-known.
Dr. Daniel Amen: ... that saffron is helpful, which is why we put it in serotonin mood support.
Tana Amen: And love it in my tea.
Dr. Daniel Amen: And when I first started using saffron in some of the Brain MD products, we live in a neighborhood where there are a number of Persian families, and I was talking about it at one of the parties we were at. And the person I was talking to said, "Oh, in Iran, saffron, the folklore, is if you're too happy, it's because you had saffron." And isn't it interesting to see the science?
Tana Amen: Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Amen: And we're just talking about how there's actually 73% of people who use SSRIs like Zoloft, or Prozac, or Lexapro, Selectsa, have sexual dysfunction. But saffron, which has also been found to be effective, is pro-sexual. So your function is better rather than it hurts your sexual function.
Tana Amen: Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen: And I don't like that 73%, because if you're not being intimate with your partner it can hurt your relationship.
Tana Amen: Right. [inaudible 00:05:49] feel as good about yourself. There's something about feeling desired and desirable in your relationship that just makes you feel better. Yeah. Interesting. Awesome. Okay. New study finds that every four extra years of education reduces the risk of binge drinking by 50%.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Stay in school.
Tana Amen: Isn't that interesting? We're always joking, stay in school, make good decisions, but it's so true. Not finishing school could double your risk of becoming a binge drinker. Researchers found that people who did an extra four years of school were 50% less likely to become alcoholics. That's just strange. Men and women who completed school were also more likely to drink wine while those who didn't were more likely to drink distilled spirits, beer, and cider. The team from the National Institute of Health said the findings suggest that promoting education may be a useful tool in public health campaigns that warn against alcohol abuse and dependence. You have to wonder if it's because they feel more competent or if it's because they've been in the habit of working so hard. I mean, I'm just wondering, I haven't read further into this, I just read the headlines, what the reason is. What would you say?
Dr. Daniel Amen: Well, I mean, in order to get through school it's better to have an unpolluted brain because you tend to finish your classes.
Tana Amen: Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen: You tend to show up. You tend to do the right things. When I was in the army, so when I was 18, I went into the army and I became an infantry medic and I was stationed in Europe. In my room in the barracks there was six people, which I didn't really like very much.
Tana Amen: Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Five of them were smoking pot. And I went to school at night, which helped decrease the contact high for me.
Tana Amen: Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen: And they just basically, here we are stationed in West Germany. It's so beautiful. I traveled all the time, went to school. They stayed in the room and got high, which leads me to the next brand new study on cannabinoids in the treatment of mental disorders. So this is in Lancet Psychiatry, so one of the best journals in the world. They did a systematic review of all of the studies published between January 1st, 1980 and April 30th, 2018 looking to see, well, the lore is if you smoke pot, that helps anxiety, that helps depression, that helps you do better in school. In fact, the conclusion was there is scarce evidence to suggest that cannabinoids improved depressive disorders, anxiety, ADHD, Tourette, PTSD, or psychosis. Though the evidence that's there is very low quality evidence and in fact there's evidence that marijuana increases anxiety, increases paranoia, and increases ADHD.
Tana Amen: Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen: So we're fighting, and brain warriors do this, we fight against the societal idea that marijuana is innocuous, that CBD is completely innocuous, and quite frankly, after seeing literally thousands of scans of people who are smoking pot, their brains are not healthy. And I published a study on 62,000 scans, the world's largest imaging study, showing marijuana actually prematurely ages the brain.
Tana Amen: So a couple of, actually several teenagers now, a couple we've taken care of and helped in different situations, and they don't want to hear this. They don't want it because it's just such a common thing for kids to do in their teenage years. And we'll tell them, because they're depressed, anxious, having problems in school and they don't want to hear that that's the reason. Just like they don't want to hear that bad food is bad for them. It's like it's just such a common thing. And literally, sometimes it's not while they're smoking it, it's almost like the hangover effect and all of a sudden they'll notice this sharp decline in mood and they'll be anxious, they'll be depressed, and it's almost instantaneous. They'll start to notice it but they don't want to admit it but when you can finally help them make that connection that that's what's really triggering it, for some people, it's obviously your genetics probably play a role, for some people it's very significant, and what are the studies that show that it increases the risk of psychosis by 400?
Dr. Daniel Amen: 450%.
Tana Amen: Yeah, in some people.
Dr. Daniel Amen: All right, so what did you learn during this Brian in the News Podcast? Write it, post it on any of your social media sites. We'd be grateful. Hashtag Brain Warrior's Way Podcast. Leave us a question, comment, or a review on brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and we'll enter you into a raffle to win one of Tana's cookbooks. Stay with us. We're going to answer your questions next.
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 podcast 10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at (855) 978-1363.