Brain Health with Amen Clinics

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin and welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I'll talk with some of the coolest people in the world.

Plus I give you tips that you.

Can put into fast action to up level your health and your life. Now today's show is super personal to me. I'm going to share with you two people who I've known for quite a long time. One over a decade now and they're some of the reasons why my son.

Is thriving the way he is.

And they are Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen. And gosh, 15 years ago I sought out Dr. Daniel Amen when my son was struggling and was showing the early signs of bipolar disorder. And I did my research out there and he was the one I had to find. I actually went to a charity event where I knew he would be and stalked him and we got to be really good friends and he spect scanned my son and helped me get everything dialed in with him. And since then, and then he started dating his wife and I was the one that helped him pick out his first real present to her, some really cool jewelry. So I helped. I credit myself for that. But we've gotten to be really good friends. I love them both dearly and I'm so happy to have them on the show today. And they are going to be talking about some really cool stuff in their new book the Brain Warrior's Way. But before I bring them on, let me tell you a little bit about each of them because each of them are rock stars in their own right now. Dr. Daniel Amen is a double board certified psychiatrist, professor and ten time New York Times best selling author. He's one of the world's foremost experts on using brain imaging tools to help optimize and treat his patients. I still think back to one of the things he said early on is like how do you know unless we look that psychiatry is like one of the few areas of medicine where they didn't look. And that was hugely helpful when we had Grant's brain spec scanned and we did that, by the way, before the accident, we had scanned and we did it post accident multiple times too. It's been very helpful in helping me get everything dialed in for him. His research has been listed as one of the top 100 stories in science for 2015 by Discover magazine. He's written and hosted 12 highly popular shows about brain for public television, and he's been featured everywhere. My gosh, New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Men's Health, and on Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil and his awesome.

Wife Tana, who is a black belt twice over.

She's the vice president of Amen Clinics, the author of eight books, including the New York Times bestseller the Omnidiet. She has been all over the place. She's a renowned speaker and media guest on the Doctors Today, Good Day New York and more, and she appears on public television. She and Daniel have raised millions of dollars for public television. So I am just honored to have Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen with us today.

All right, let's do it. Dr. Daniel. Amen, Tana. Amen. Welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Thanks, jj.

What a joy.

I am in love with this whole brain warrior concept. Of course, like, couldn't be. That book was written for me and my family. So let's talk about, like, first of all, the title. Like, where'd this whole war idea come from?

Well, we've been trying to get people healthy for a long time, assisting them, you know, just like you. And at some point I realized it's hard. And it's hard because you're in a war. Everywhere you go, someone is trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early. The real weapons of mass destruction, and I'm not saying this tongue in cheek, but they're highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber food like substances wrapped in plasticized containers. And if you're not aware of the war for your health, we know Alzheimer's is expected to triple. Depression's gone up 400%, 50%.5 0% of the US population is either diabetic or or pre diabetic. 60% of us are hypertensive or pre hypertensive, and 2/3 of us are overweight. And you know my research that said as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. So if you're not arm prepared and aware, you're gonna lose and it's gonna cost you and the people you love dearly.

Well, and, jj, you have been through the war with your son Grant. So you know, you know what it takes to have a warrior mind. I love your work on mindset. We do the same thing from the standpoint of we teach mastery. So mastery is an acronym for M is mindset. If you don't know your why, you'll never do your what. A is assessment, and S is sustenance. That's the food you have to eat to win. You have to eat like a warrior. So T is training. Those are those daily habits. You can't show up on fight day and think that you're going to win if you haven't been training every day. E is essence. And that's one of my favorite parts as somebody who's been through the war. If you've ever been sick, taking care of a child who is sick, you know it's a war. So E is turning your pain into purpose. That's your essence. R is responsibility. Because it's not just about you. It's about generations of you. And responsibility really means the ability to respond. So it's your. You taking that. That empowerment and being able to respond. And then why is that? It's years long. So we're not going to lie to people and say, oh, four hours to this, or what? Yes, you'll feel better right away, but you need to tell yourself and know that these habits take time to plant, and we want you to have a program that you can do forever.

But these habits that take time to plant will impact every single area of your life. You know, it's like, without a healthy brain. And, of course we know if you have a healthy brain, you have a healthy body, you got nothing. So. And, boy, I know that so intimately. Now let's, like, go into some key takeaways. I love this whole mastery concept. And let's just. Let's just make sure that if people are doing some of the, like, worst things out there, we can get them off of some of those things today. So what are some of the worst habits that people could be doing that hurt their brain?

So they're looking at their phone before they go to bed at night, that they've not taken the time to put blue light blockers on because all the gadgets are flooding our brain with light when melatonin should be increasing so that we sleep. I love what you said when we did another interview with you, which said even at a time of crisis, you focused on getting eight hours of sleep and self care.

You focused on self care.

Hey, what you just brought up here though, this is so key. I was reading a study that said that one of the reasons they believe we've got this childhood obesity epidemic, I mean, there's multiples, but one of them was because of this very reason. And kids aren't getting enough sleep.

Absolutely.

So. And the obesogens, and it's the products we put on our body that are toxic, that drop our hormones, that help keep us healthy and thin, like thyroid and testosterone is another one. It's clearly the low quality food and the food companies purposefully getting the right crunchiness, the right meltiness, the right aroma, the right the high levels of sugar that trigger the nucleus accumbens, which is the addiction center in the brain to cause us to crave things that hurt us.

So our 13 year old said something really interesting. She's a warrior, Chloe. And she wasn't always, but now she's got it, she gets it. And she said something to me yesterday on the way to the gym. We were going to the gym. We go to the gym before school. And she said, I don't understand why when I do everything, it's easy to do everything, but when I stop doing one thing, she goes, if I don't work out, I don't want to eat right. If I don't eat right, I don't want to work out. She goes, it's like if I eat the wrong foods, my energy completely drops, I feel foggy and I feel lazy. So we intuitively know that if a 13 year old gets this, we intuitively know that food affects us that way, that not exercising makes you feel sluggish, that when we do it all, we feel better. And it doesn't take a lot. Right?

Right. But someone's sitting here right now and they're listening. And you know, I've got a sophisticated audience that's into all of this, but maybe there's some people listening right now that are starting to get into it and then they hear all this and they're like, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming.

What we actually talk about in the book are these things called tiny habits. You know what is? And I was able to boil it down to one simple tiny habit day. And that's. You ask yourself the question. No matter what you do, you start the day with asking yourself this one question, is what I'm going to do today, good for my brain or bad for it? And we'll give you the list. But ultimately, answering that question in a Positive way is a sign of love, that you love yourself so much that you're gonna do the right thing. Too often people go, oh, well, I don't wanna deprive myself. But when you don't do the right things, you're depriving yourself of what you really want, which is energy and memory, vitality and good health. We see your relationship to food like other relationships. I've been in bad relationships with people who didn't love me back. I'm not doing that again. And I' love with foods that will hurt me, that will steal from my.

Happiness and you know, jj, so I am a fairly intense person. I've known you for a long time and teachers characteristics and confidence. And as a coach, I used to think that people really needed to jump the canyon. It's like, you've got to do. You've got to do it all. You got to do it all at once. And if you can't cross a canyon in two small steps, you've just got to take all of this at once. And because that's how my personality is, my daughter's the same way. But, you know, I learned over time that most people feel overwhelmed. There are some people like us that just do that, that they need to do it all, and they need to do it all at once. And there are other people who don't. They can't do that. What they need to do is they need to rappel down that canyon wall, cross over and go up the other side. They need to do it in many small steps. That's okay as long as you get to the other side.

Yes. And I love what you're saying because I like to say little hinges swing the big door. So exactly what you're saying is love it. Plus it allows people to create habits. And unless it's a habit, it's not going to impact you over time anyway. So.

Absolutely.

Well, and everybody has habits. It's like, are these habits serving you or are they hurting you? And the brain hates change. The brain wants to do what it has done. And so there's some work. But like I was a warrior. I was in the army for 10 years.

And.

And there it takes training to become competent at being a war fighter. It takes training and competence to be serious about your health in our society.

Right. And I have two black belts, and that didn't happen overnight. In fact, when I first started, I felt so awkward. I felt my first thought was, I'm never going to get this. I'm never going to be skilled and competent. And so it took, like we're talking about, it took taking those movements and breaking them down into their smallest pieces. And it took years to become a black belt in both of those arts. But the point is, is that over time, it became more and more natural. So you can break it down into. We break those habits down into their smallest pieces, and you just master one at a time.

Well, let's pull out a couple of them. And I loved how you started with the cell phone at night, because that's probably one people don't think about. So I'd love to pull out a couple of these things that are things people wouldn't necessarily think about that they can start putting into their life as habits.

So I think that when people. One thing my daughter and I do every morning, if you create certain traditions, little habits that you do that are that make you feel really good, believe it or not, people know this one, but they don't always know why. Drinking water. So we wake up every morning and we have a big cup of warm water with lemon, ginger, and a little bit of cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper stimulates, you know, your metabolism. The ginger is cleansing, the lemon is alkalinizing. But really the reason to do that is because the fastest way to perk up your brain in the morning is to hydrate it. When you studies. There were two studies that were really interesting. People who go to the gym hydrated, had 19% increased overall power. They were able to lift heavier. They had increased cardiac output and greater aerobic capacity. And a study done with pilots showed that they had better cognitive function and spatial reasoning. Now, I don't know about you, but if they were 2% dehydrated, their spatial reasoning and cognitive function was off, and.

Their cortisol goes up, too. I mean, it's just that minimal amount of, you know, we always hear about. And I'm glad you brought that up as to why, because it's like, drink more water. And it's like, well, you know, we gotta know why. But, you know, on the weight loss side, some of the easiest things that you can put in place to boost your metabolism and to keep your stress hormones in check.

Yeah. And you make better decisions because your brain works better and you gotta start the morning that way and you'll feel so much better right off the bat.

I know. And it's basically free.

One other thing is start every day not only with is this good for my brain or bad for it? But with this little phrase that'll make all the difference in Your day. Today is going to be a great day. Because if when you open your eyes in the morning and you just say to yourself, today is going to be a great day, your brain will then find the reason why today is going to be a great day. If you go, oh, it's going to be a long day. Not another day. I'm so overwhelmed, then you will be unhappy the whole day long. But you have to train your brain to look for what it loves about your life rather than what it hates about your life.

Yep.

You get what you focus on. That's for darn sure. Okay, what's another one? I love those ones. And I love how Mindset's playing such a big part of this program. And that starts there. That's fantastic. I think we both come to that same conclusion.

You know, we talk a lot about epigenetics in the book, that it's really not about you, that your habits turn on or off certain genes that make illness more or less likely in you, but also in your babies and your grandbabies. When Chloe was born, when our daughter was born, she was actually born with all the eggs she'll ever have. And so her habits throughout her life are turning on or off certain genes, making illness more or less likely in our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. So really understanding how important your health is, because then you have a really important reason to engage in the war in a way that makes you want to win.

Well, and I will add one thing to that. In addition to the epigenetic piece, it's also about the habits. Your kids don't do what you say, they do what you do, and they may fight back for a long time. And then at some point, your habits usually end up rubbing off on them. But you have to do it. You can't just tell them, yes.

That's why self care is so selfless. My younger son Bryce, had these migraines, a lot of them triggered once my other son was in the hospital. But I noticed that when he ate pizza, not that I got it for him, but if he was out and he ate pizza, he'd have a migraine. I'm like, Bryce, when you eat pizza, you have a migraine. No, mom, you know, you couldn't be right. And, you know, I'd always talk to him about the gluten and dairy and sugar, and we didn't keep those things around the house. Well, but he'd eat them out. He goes off to college, and he is now the healthiest eater out there. And I'm like, Looking at going, wow, it did rub off. They do. And he goes to the gym. He does all of those things. So I love that because it is key. You know, if you're sitting here thinking, oh, it's selfish for me to. To do all this stuff for myself and to exercise and sleep and all that, I should be taking time away from my family. No, you're not. You're actually doing the most important thing you possibly could for your family. Yeah.

So Bright and Chloe sound a lot alike because Chloe did the same thing. So maybe in five or six years, we should introduce them.

Yes.

What a gene pool that would be, right? All right, now, I know you have an amazing podcast because I was just a guest on it. Super exciting. Tell everyone about it because everyone wants to jump on this one. I'm addicted to bring to podcasts, so I just love that you guys have launched this one.

So we're really excited. It's called the Brain Warriors Way. So if people go to brainwarriorsway podcast.com, they can learn all about the mission and the tools and habits to get their brain and body as healthy as possible. And if they leave a review, they can actually sign up. We'll enter them into a drawing we do every quarter for free evaluation at Amen Clinics. We are so grateful for you, for your friendship and the ability to share our message with your audience.

Well, thank you. And you've been Grant's doc for years. My doc for years. We've all been spec scanned. So that is an amazing opportunity people have for going and listening to your podcast and entering in. So thank you guys so much for joining me today. So appreciate you.

Thanks, jj.

Thanks, jj.

All right, after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back.

This is the time where I answer a listener's question.

And today's question comes from Missy in.

Hartford, and she writes, jj, I'm so happy to hear that Grant is doing so well. What have you done to help him heal his brain injury? All right, missy, one things that I love. That's part of Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen's message is that you really need to take a comprehensive approach to heal your brain. And it's been exactly that for helping Grant heal. There is a variety of things that I've done. I'm actually putting it all together in a program so that everyone can have access to it. But let me share with you a couple different things that I see that made a big difference. Of course, fish oil has been key, and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to optimize your omega 3 levels because they protect your brain. I think everybody should be taking fish oil. Grant was on 5 grams of fish oil a day prior to the accident. I know that this is one of the reasons he was able to make it through this. This was an injury that, you know, gosh, would have taken most people out. So big thing is to make sure you're on fish oil because you never know when you're going to hit your head. And if you hit your head, you hurt your brain. Of course, diet plays another key role in here, reducing the inflammatory foods, eating good, healthy fats. You know, one of the first places you get toxic is with what you eat, as Daniel mentioned in our interview. And then the other thing is sleep, and Daniel mentioned that too, of being careful of using your tech tools at night because they excite your neurons. One of the things when you're recovering from a brain injury is you need even more sleep. And so Grant was sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day. Initially, he was sleeping almost all the time, but as we got to get him out more and more, it went from sleeping 16 or 20 hours a day down to 16, down to 10 to 12. And now he's. Now he's about 10 hours a night still because he's still healing. And that's important to understand. He is still healing and still recovering. And then it takes years. And support has been huge. In fact, when he talks about when the Gray man asked me if he wanted to live or die, it was knowing his family was there, hearing his family that made him make the decision. So support has been key and so important. Socialization, isolation is one of the most critical things facing us today. So family, support, friends support. So important, remember that if you have someone around you going through these things is to be there as much as you possibly can. And exercise and specifically coordination, exercise.

One of the things that Dr. Amen.

Had grant doing to help start rewiring everything was playing ping pong. So that. And of course exercise all exercise helps increase blood flow to your brain, so that is key and critical too. Now there's a lot more things we were doing, but those are some of the key ones and key ones that you can do and that ideally will be just a part of your everyday life. Again, that's fish oil, an anti inflammatory healing diet, good sleep, family and social support, and exercise. All right, if you'd like to submit a question, just head over to my Facebook page jjvirginofficial. Look for the little blue check mark and I have a favor to ask. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on over to Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch. While you're there, be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. Thank you. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to live courageously. Show up, step up. You are stronger than you think.

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