Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (Revised and Expanded): The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems - Softcover

Amen M.D., Daniel G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 110190464X ISBN 13: 9781101904640

Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this completely revised and updated edition, neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen includes effective "brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life.

“Perfection in combining leading-edge brain science technology with a proven, user-friendly, definitive, and actionable road map to safeguard and enhance brain health and functionality.”—David Perlmutter, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of Grain Brain
 
In Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, renowned neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen, M.D., includes new, cutting-edge research gleaned from more than 100,000 SPECT brain scans over the last quarter century and scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures work in your brain. Dr. Amen’s “brain prescriptions” will help you:

• To quell anxiety and panic: Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
• To fight depression: Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) and use supplements targeted to your brain type
• To curb anger: Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage
• To boost memory: Learn the specific steps and habits to decrease your risk for Alzheimer’s disease that can help you today
• To conquer impulsiveness and learn to focus: Develop total focus with the One-Page Miracle
• To stop obsessive worrying: Follow the “get unstuck” writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises
 
You’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with. 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daniel G. Amen, MD, is a clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and brain imaging expert who heads the world-renowned Amen Clinics. The Washington Post called Dr. Amen the most popular psychiatrist in America, and Sharecare named him the web's #1 most influential expert and advocate on mental health. He is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a nine-time New York Times bestselling author, including Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Magnificent Mind at Any Age, and Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. He is also an internationally recognized keynote speaker and the star of several very popular public television specials.

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12 Principles to Change Your Brain and Your Life

At Amen Clinics we have twelve core principles that provide the foundation for our work with patients suffering from a range of issues as well as those looking to optimize their brains. They are incredibly simple, but don’t let that fool you. They are also extremely powerful and will change everything in your life if you read, understand, and apply them.

1.Your brain is involved in everything you do and everything you are, including how you think, how you feel, how you act, and how well you get along with other people. Your brain is the organ behind your intelligence, character, personality, and every single decision you make. This is not a new idea. In about 400 BC, Hippocrates wrote, “And men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter, and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, despondency, and tears. And by this, in a special manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what is foul and what is fair, what is bad and what is good, what is sweet, and what is unsavory . . . And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, where fears and terrors assail us . . . All these things we endure from the brain, when it is not healthy . . . In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man. This is the interpreter to us of those things which emanate from the air, when the brain happens to be in a sound state.” (18)

It is your brain that decides whether you should get married and if you get divorced. It is your brain that manages your money and helps you be successful at work. And it is your brain that pushes you away from the table, telling you that you have had enough (or that gives you permission to have the third bowl of ice cream). Yet most people never ­really think about their brains, which is a huge mistake, because success in anything you do starts with a healthy brain.

2.When your brain works right, you work right. But when your brain is troubled, you are much more likely to have trouble in your life. With a healthy brain you are happier, physically healthier (because you make better decisions), wealthier (also because you make better decisions), and more successful in everything you do. When your brain is unhealthy, for whatever reason (brain injuries, drug abuse, obesity, sleep apnea, mold toxicity, etc.), you are sadder, sicker, poorer, and less successful. In all the books about success on the shelf at your local bookstore, virtually none of them talk about optimizing the physical health of your brain. Based on our work with tens of thousands of people, we believe it is always the first place to start.

Image 1:1

If you ­really understand principle number 2 it can be disturbing, because it directly challenges the notion of free will. Most people think of free will as black or white: you have it or you don’t. Our imaging work has taught me that free will is a gray concept. Some of us have great overall brain function and likely have a very high percentage of free will; while others, often through no fault of their own, such as having been in a car accident, have less healthy brains, leading to less free will and more troubled lives.

3.Your brain is the most amazing, ­energy-­hungry organ in the universe. It is estimated that your brain has one hundred billion cells, with each one connected to other cells by up to ten thousand individual connections. It has also been estimated that you have more connections in your brain than there are stars in the universe. Let’s put this in ­binge-­ watching television terms: it’s been estimated that the brain has the storage capacity of three million hours of TV shows (19).

Even though your brain is only about 2 percent of your ­body’s weight (about three pounds), it uses 20 to 30 percent of the calories you consume and 20 percent of your ­body’s blood flow. Take a moment to consider that. Your brain is the most metabolically expensive real estate in your body. This is important to understand, because any form of oxygen deprivation state, from a scary event like a ­near-­drowning episode to the seemingly commonplace, like having sleep apnea, can damage your brain.

4.Your brain is the consistency of soft butter and housed in a ­really hard skull with multiple sharp bony ridges, making it easily injured. Think of something that falls in between ­Jell-­O and egg whites on the softness ­spectrum—­that’s your brain. For extra credit, visit this link to watch a video of a newly autopsied brain, so you can see how soft it ­really is: ­https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxyP-­nUhUY. Now imagine it encased in a ­really hard skull with many sharp bony ridges (see Image 1:2). Jarring motions and head injuries can cause the brain to slam into the hard interior of the skull, causing brain injuries that can ruin lives.

Soft brain + hard skull with sharp ridges = trouble

Image 1:2: Inside the Skull

Notice the sharp bony ridges.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are a major cause of psychiatric illness and few people know this, because most psychiatrists never look at the brain. TBI has been linked to homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, ADD/ADHD, learning problems, school failure, murder, suicide, domestic violence, job failure, and incarceration. In a study I did at Sierra Tucson, a psychiatric hospital in Arizona, 44 percent of new admissions had a significant history of brain injury. In another study of homeless people in Toronto, 58 percent of the men and 42 percent of the women had had a significant brain injury before becoming homeless.

At the time of this writing, more than three hundred thousand veterans have sustained a TBI since 2000 (8); the effects of such injuries can follow people for the rest of their lives, indicating that it’s likely those veterans and society will feel the consequences for many decades to come.

Two million new TBIs occur each year as a result of falls, accidents, and concussions. We have to do a much better job of preventing TBIs and repairing the brain once they occur. When President Barack Obama and LeBron James, both huge sports fans, said they would not let their children play tackle football, it was a sign that awareness about the effects of TBI are starting to become part of our cultural fabric.

5.Many things hurt the brain. Obviously, drugs, too much alcohol, infections, environmental toxins, and traumatic head injuries are bad for your brain. But research also tells us that obesity (20); sleep apnea (21); hypertension (22, 23), and even high normal blood pressure levels; diabetes (24, 25), prediabetes, and even high normal blood sugar levels; many medications, such as benzodiazepines (26, 27); the Standard American Diet (SAD), filled with processed foods, pesticides (28, 29), sugar, and artificial colors and sweeteners; unbalanced hormone levels; chronic stress (30, 31); negative thinking; even spending time with unhealthy people are all bad for the brain. Take a moment to think how many of these factors might be affecting you.

6. Many things help the brain. The exciting news is that many things are also good for your brain and can boost its function, such as learning new things; great nutrition; coordination exercises; meditation; loving relationships; and certain nutrients, including vitamins B6, B12, and D, methyltetrahydrofolate (MTHF), ­omega-­3 fatty acids, and phosphatidylserine. In many ways, the best thing you can do for your brain is to spend time with healthy people. As we will see, they are contagious. I often say the fastest way to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 110190464X
• ISBN 13: 9781101904640
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar