How To Have A Healthy Brain
In the quest to have a healthy brain, Dr. Daniel Amen, MD, believes that while we spend much time and effort to maintain a healthy body, we forget about the health of our brain. If our brain is at it's best, we make good decisions that can affect the rest of our lives. If our brain isn't at it's best, we will be more likely to make poor decisions. The good news is that we can change our habits and rehabilitate our brains - often in a few short months.
Dr. Amen is a physician, double board certified
psychiatrist, teacher and 5 time New Your Times bestselling
author including his most recent book,
The Science of the Brain
Dr. Amen is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost
experts on applying brain imaging science to everyday
clinical practice. Dr. Amen is the founder of Amen Clinics
and is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric
Association.
Dr. Amen is an expert in brain imaging and science.
He studies activity patterns in the brain and how it
works. He then compares patients' brains to 73,000 brain
scans from people of all ages from 90 countries in his
database. From this comparison, Dr. Amen can see how
healthy a patient's brain is and then recommend a program
to rehabilitate the brain, if needed.
Our brain is soft like butter, but encased in a hard scull.
There is nothing as complicated as the human brain. It is
small compared to the rest of our body, but consumes 20% -
30% of the calories that we consume.
We lose on average 85,000 neurons a day. Our behavior and
habits can accelerate this process or decelerate the
process.
How Being Overweight Impacts The Brain
How well we think is related to how good of a diet we have.
If we eat a fast food diet, we will not form the neurons
we need to have a healthy brain.
There have been 18 studies that show as our weight goes up,
the physical size of the brain goes down. Dr. Amen
published a study that showed that the overweight group in
the study had low frontal lobe activity. The frontal lobe
is the fron 1/3 of the brain. If a person is overweight with a BMI over 30, it was found that they had 8% less brain tissue and their brain looked 16 years older than healthy people of the same age.
Dr. Amen believes that we should pay special attention to
our gut and how it affects our brain. He says that our gut
produces neurotransmitters for the brain. A healthy gut
goes a long way to ensuring a healthy brain.
The #1 Indicator of How Long We Live
The bottom line for the health of our brain is to avoid the
bad things and do the good things. The #1 determination of
how long people live, according to Dr. Amen, is whether or
not they are conscientious. In other words, do you do
what you say you will do? If so, you have a good chance of
living a long life.
Avoid These Things For A Healthy Brain
- Heavy metals
- Too much alcohol
- Drugs
- Smoking
- Caffeine
- Prescription drugs
- Getting hit in the head (ie. tackle football)
- Toxic environment
- Being overweight
Do These Things For a Healthy Brain
- Eat a healthy diet
- Exercise - studies show that the faster that you walk as
you age and the stronger that you are, the longer that you
will live - Targeted supplements such as a multiple vitamin with B
vitamins, 2000 IUs of vitamin D, fish oil, ginko biloba,
carnitine and phosphyltylserine - Enhance physical strength
- Learn new things
- Maintain steady blood sugar
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Think positively because negative thoughts increase stress
hormones and kill brain cells.
For more of Dr. Amen's information on the healthy brain, see his
book,
Alzheimer's Disease
Dr. Amen says that Alzheimer's disease begins many years
before the symptoms show up. It often starts decades
earlier. So the earlier in life that we begin to have good
health habits, the better our chances of avoiding
Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Amen says that emotional struggles such as depression
double a woman's chances of getting Alzheimer's disease and
it quadruples the odds of a man getting Alzheimer's
disease.
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