CHAPTER 2

THE MISSING STRATEGY

BOOSTING BRAIN HEALTH CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GREAT NOW AND FOR A LIFETIME

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

THOMAS EDISON

RAIN: THE RIGHT TREATMENT FOR A TROUBLED CHILD

At 2:10 one morning in June 2010, life changed forever for Trish, a California mom of three. She received a call from Child Protective Services asking if she was interested in picking up her 10-month-old niece, Rain, who had been taken into custody after being exposed to domestic violence. Trish had never met the child before and discovered that Rain was quiet, malnourished, and almost catatonic. Trish thought at first that she could be autistic, but once around Trish’s teenage children, Rain started to come out of her shell. At 18 months Rain went to her first preschool, but within two months she had been kicked out of three schools. She was described as impulsively mean, even though at times she could be very empathetic, especially to animals. At this young age, Rain head-butted, kicked, hit, pinched, and punched. She had to stay with a nanny until she went to kindergarten.

Rain was suspended from school the first month for violent behavior. This continued into first grade. After many painful meetings with the school, it was decided to place Rain in a school that deals with behaviorally disordered children. She went to a level 1 school, which lasted 90 days. She was then transferred to a level 2 school for children with more severe behavioral issues, which only lasted 30 days, and finally to the most restrictive type of school, level 3, which still couldn’t help her control her tantrums. The school system totally failed Rain. The principal told Trish the school would only keep Rain if she were put on psychiatric medication, which Trish refused to do because she thought they didn’t really know what was going on with her child.

“We tried and tried and tried to get her help and failed miserably. Nothing is worse than not being able to help your child, especially not understanding why she suffered,” Trish told me. “We wondered, What are we doing wrong as parents? We had three kids in college, so our track record was pretty good. We simply did not know what to do besides pray. So, we prayed —a lot!”

Yet another new school suspended Rain within two months for destruction of property and fighting with other kids. At age seven, she was now being placed in a private school with a locked campus. Trish had just started to work as the director of the call center at Amen Clinics.

“I was ready to quit my job. I was called to the school every day, like clockwork, for 10 consecutive days. As a parent I was simply exhausted and out of hope. But I did have an advantage: I worked at Amen Clinics. Although we see kids all day, it just had not sunk in that this could be a ‘mental health’ issue. So we scanned her brain.”

Rain’s scan was very abnormal. She had a pattern we call the “ring of fire,” with excessive activity in her whole brain, especially her anterior cingulate gyrus, meaning she would get stuck on negative thoughts and behaviors. The child’s brain was working way too hard, giving her little control over her own behavior. It was easy to call her a bad girl until you looked at her brain. We put Rain on supplements to calm her brain, had her see a neurofeedback therapist, and changed her diet, eliminating gluten and dairy.

RAIN BEFORE

Rain yelling angrily.

RAIN AND TRISH AFTER

Rain and Trish together, smiling at the camera.

NORMAL “ACTIVE” BRAIN SPECT SCAN

Active SPECT scan showing greater activity in the cerebellum.

Most active areas in cerebellum at back of brain

RAIN’S SPECT SCAN

Active SPECT scan showing greater activity near the brain's surface, mostly along the sides and rear.

Ring of fire pattern: overall increased activity

In the first 30 days Rain had fewer issues. Within 60 days the school had stopped calling. Trish thought, Is this really happening? After about 90 days, Rain said for the first time ever, “Mom, I like school.” Trish cried tears of joy. What’s even more amazing is that Rain, now eight years old, is in second grade, but she reads, writes, and tests in science and math at the sixth-grade level. She is in a new school, which wanted to move her ahead two grades. She was never academically tested prior to second grade because she was so overfocused that she was unable to cooperate or pay attention. Trish told me, “She won ‘writer of the year’ and ‘most empathic peer.’ My child, who wanted to burn down the school, is finally not fighting her own brain. My daughter smiles, laughs, reads, and has not been kicked out of school or put her hands on another child since getting the help she needed.”

HELPING YOUR BRAIN IS THE MISSING STRATEGY

Too often, when people feel sad, nervous, panicky, grief-stricken, or unhappy, they engage in behaviors that hurt their brains, and thus their lives. And well-meaning professionals often prescribe medications without ever looking at the brain. Whenever you have negative or out-of-control feelings, the secret to feeling better fast is to engage in behaviors that serve the physical health of your brain, rather than hurt it.

Over the years, I have been able to simplify brain health into these three steps:

  1. Develop brain envy.
  2. Avoid anything that hurts your brain.
  3. Engage in regular brain-healthy habits.

Strategy #1: Develop brain envy.

Anyone who has read my books is familiar with a concept I call brain envy. To truly be your best, you need to love and care for the three-pound supercomputer between your ears. And it helps to have a healthy envy of the people around you who respect and take care of their brains, as it acts as a powerful motivator to emulate their behavior. Yet very few people really care about their brains, likely because they cannot see them. You can see the wrinkles in your skin, the fat around your belly, the flab on your arms, or the graying hair around your temples, and you can do something about any of those things if they make you unhappy. But because very few people ever look at their brains with imaging studies like SPECT, many just don’t pay attention to them. As a result, they don’t care about them, which is why parents allow children to hit soccer balls with their heads, play tackle football, or do dangerous gymnastic or cheerleading routines —and why they feed their kids unhealthy food. It is also why you may text while driving, drink too much alcohol, smoke pot, eat low-quality fast food on the run, allow automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) to infest your mind, or not make sleep a priority.

Once you truly love your brain, everything in your life changes because you have a heightened sense of urgency to care for it, just as you would care for a new $300,000 Ferrari. Would you ever pour sugar or salt into the gas tank? Would you run the car until it couldn’t go anymore without maintenance? Of course not! But isn’t your brain worth so much more? Of course it is. Your brain needs you to love and care for it, or it will never be able to fully take care of you.

When you develop brain envy and truly love your brain, it becomes easier to focus on the right habits to keep it healthy over time. You’re also more likely to make these changes with a great attitude. Doing the right things for your brain is self-reinforcing. Gradually you realize that you don’t feel deprived. Rather, you start to feel bad when you do the wrong things because you realize you are hurting the most important part of you, the part that runs everything in your life. That is the epitome of self-destructive behavior. Ultimately, as we will see in chapter 12, taking care of our brains is about loving ourselves and others.

To drive this point home, let’s contrast ten statements I hear from my patients who have brain envy with the assertions I hear from those who have brain apathy.

BRAIN ENVY STATEMENTS

BRAIN APATHY STATEMENTS

I love my brain.

I never think about my brain.

Every day, I make the best decisions I can.

Everything in moderation. (This opens the door to illness because it becomes your excuse to keep doing the wrong thing.)

I am aware of the pitfalls around me.

Don’t take things so seriously.

I try to do the best for my brain every day, including holidays.

It’s the weekend. I should live a little.

I focus on getting good sleep.

Sleep is not a priority. I’m just too busy.

I only buy healthy food for my family.

My kids won’t eat anything healthy. I buy them what they want, so at least they’ll eat something.

I get my important health numbers tested every year.

I haven’t had a checkup in years.

I won’t let my kids play sports where they could hit their heads.

I allow my kids to make their own decisions about sports.

I have dementia in my family. I am going to do everything I can to avoid it.

I have dementia in my family. It’s genetic, so there’s nothing I can do about it.

I keep my weight at a healthy level, to protect my brain.

Everyone’s overweight. What’s the big deal?

I gave up sugar to save my brain.

I’d rather get Alzheimer’s disease than give up sugar.

It should be obvious which column will give you better overall brain health.

How can you make brain envy actionable in your life? Use the Tiny Habit you learned in the introduction: Whenever you come to a decision point in your day, ask yourself, “Is the decision I’m about to make good for my brain or bad for it?” In the rest of this chapter and the chapters to come, we’ll take a look at many specific behaviors and choices that will positively affect your brain, so you’ll be fully equipped to answer this question. But you may already know more than you think you do. Consider these three examples:

If you practice brain envy and make a habit of asking, “Is this decision good for my brain or bad for it?” at the moment of choice, and then make the best decision for the health of your brain, it will help you feel better fast in a way that will be long lasting.

Love your brain by asking yourself at the moment of every choice, “Is this good for my brain or bad for it?”

Strategy #2: Avoid anything that hurts your brain.

One of the world’s richest men, famed business investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett, has two rules of investing:

In the same way, the most important rules of brain health are

Losing brain cells is much harder to recover from than any financial loss. Just ask anyone who has had a serious brain injury or stroke. When I was in medical school, we were taught that people were born with all of the brain cells they would ever have, and once those were gone, that was it. While we now know that is not completely true, only certain small areas of the brain make new cells every day. That’s why you should do everything you can to avoid losing the brain cells you have.

In my book Memory Rescue: Supercharge Your Brain, Reverse Memory Loss, and Remember What Matters Most, I developed the mnemonic BRIGHT MINDS to help you remember the 11 major factors that steal brain cells and lead to cognitive impairment. You can prevent or treat almost all of these risk factors, and even the ones that you can’t, such as having a family history of dementia, can be ameliorated with the right strategies. Here is a brief summary of the BRIGHT MINDS risk factors. The risks marked with an asterisk (*) are things that might make you feel better temporarily but will hurt you in the long run.

B – Blood flow: Circulation is essential to life. It is the conduit for transporting nutrients to, and toxins away from, your cells. Low blood flow shrinks the brain and kills its cells. In fact, low blood flow on brain imaging is the number one predictor of future Alzheimer’s disease. What’s more, if you have blood flow problems anywhere, you likely have them throughout your body.

Blood Flow Risks That Drain Your Brain

R – Retirement/Aging: The risk of brain dysfunction increases with age. When you stop learning or connecting with others, your brain starts dying.

Retirement/Aging Risks That Drain Your Brain

I – Inflammation: Chronic inflammation is like a low-level fire in your body that destroys your organs. Here’s a list of inflammation promoters.

Inflammation Risks That Drain Your Brain

G – Genetics: Your inheritance matters, but your lifestyle matters more. As we will see, genetic risk is not a death sentence; it should be a wake-up call to get serious about brain health.

Genetic Risks That Drain Your Brain

H – Head trauma: Your brain is soft, about the consistency of soft butter, and it is housed in a very hard skull with multiple sharp, bony ridges. Head injuries, such as concussions, even mild ones, can kill brain cells and cause significant, lasting cognitive problems. Even one concussion triples the risk of suicide.[79]

Head Trauma Risks That Drain Your Brain

T – Toxins: Toxins are a major cause of brain dysfunction. Your brain is the most metabolically active organ in your body, which makes it more vulnerable to damage from a long list of toxins. Personal care products are particularly dangerous, because what goes on your body goes in and becomes your body.

Toxin Risks That Drain Your Brain

M – Mental health: Untreated problems ranging from chronic stress and anxiety to bipolar disorder and addictions are associated with cognitive impairment and early death.

Mental Health Risks That Drain Your Brain

I – Immunity/Infection issues: These are common but often unrecognized causes of brain dysfunction.

Immunity/Infection Risks That Drain Your Brain

N – Neurohormone deficiencies: When your hormone levels are unbalanced, your brain is too.

Neurohormone Deficiencies That Drain Your Brain

D – Diabesity: The term describes a combination of being diabetic or prediabetic and being overweight or obese. The standard American diet is a major cause of diabesity, which contributes to chronically high blood sugar levels. These hurt blood vessels and cause inflammation and hormone disruption as well as the storage of toxins —all of which damage the brain.

Diabesity Risks That Drain Your Brain

S – Sleep issues: All sleep problems are a major cause of brain dysfunction, but especially chronic insomnia and sleep apnea. When you sleep, your brain cleanses itself of debris. Without proper sleep, trash builds up, harming the brain.

Sleep Issues That Drain Your Brain

Whatever you want in life, it is easier to achieve when your brain works right. It is important to have the right attitude as you make these changes. You don’t avoid things in order to deprive yourself. You avoid things that hurt your brain because it is the ultimate act of love —for yourself and others.

“But How Can I Have Any Fun?”

For the past 13 years, Dr. Jesse Payne and I have taught a high school course we created called “Brain Thrive by 25” that teaches teens how to love and care for their brains. It has now been taught in 42 states and 7 countries. Independent research in 16 schools found it decreased drug, alcohol, and tobacco use as well as depression, and improved self-esteem. Whenever we teach the section of the course on things to avoid to have a healthy brain, invariably a teenage boy —rarely a girl —will raise his hand and ask, “But how can I have any fun?”

Whenever we get this question, we play a game with the teens called “Who has more fun? The teen with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?” I recently gave a lecture to 7,000 high school students and their parents at the Congress of Future Physicians. These were high-performing teens who wanted to become physicians. I played this game with them and asked the crowd, “Who gets into the college of his choice . . . the teen with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?”

In unison, they screamed, “The teen with the good brain.”

I then asked, “Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he doesn’t act like a jerk . . . the guy with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?”

The girls in the arena roared with approval, “The guy with the good brain.”

I then wondered, “Who gets the best jobs and keeps them . . . the woman with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?”

“The woman with the good brain” was the answer that came back to me.

“Who makes the most money . . . the person with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?” I asked.

“The person with the good brain,” they agreed.

“Who is the best parent . . . the dad or mom with the good brain or the one with the bad brain?”

“The dad or mom with the good brain,” they shouted.

And finally, I said, “Who takes the coolest vacations, drives the coolest cars, and has the most meaning and purpose in their lives?”

“The ones with the good brains,” they roared.

Then I told them about one of my celebrity friends whom I had helped to quit smoking pot 12 weeks earlier. The week before the lecture, I texted her this question: “Are you having more fun with your good habits or with the bad ones?”

She texted me right back, “Ha! Good! By a billion!”

Strategy #3: Engage in regular brain-healthy habits.

Now that you know what risk factors to avoid, it is critical that you develop discipline around building the best daily habits. I’ll discuss them in the context of our BRIGHT MINDS program, starting with several overarching habits you will want to adopt.

General Strategies

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Find the healthiest person you can stand and then spend as much time around him or her as possible.

B - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Brain Blood Flow

5 to 60 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Eat a beet salad, sprinkled with pumpkin seeds, and small pieces of dark chocolate with a cup of green tea.

R - Simple Antiaging Brain-Healthy Habits

5 to 60 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Listen to stimulating music or sing. Make a playlist of the songs that make you feel amazing (see chapter 1, pages 22–23).

I - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Decrease Inflammation

5 to 30 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Eat more omega-3 rich foods, such as clean fish, avocados, and walnuts.

G - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Your Genetics

5 to 30 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Defrost a cup of frozen organic blueberries to have as a snack. My daughter Chloe calls them God’s candy.

H - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Decrease Head Trauma Issues

5 to 60 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Talk to your doctor about HBOT treatments.

T - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Detoxify Your Brain and Body

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Take a sauna bath —the more often, the better.[86]

M - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Your Mental Health

5 to 60 minutes.

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: When your mood is low, take a walk in nature while drinking vegetable juice.

I - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Your Immunity

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Eat a stir-fry with onions, garlic, mushrooms, and a protein; skip the rice.

N - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Your Neurohormones

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Lift weights and eliminate sugar to help raise your testosterone level.

D - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Decrease Your Risk of Diabesity and Improve Your Weight and Blood Sugar

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: Sniff a cinnamon stick or peppermint.

S - Simple Brain-Healthy Habits to Improve Your Sleep

FEEL BETTER FAST NOW AND LATER TIP: At bedtime, put the scent of lavender nearby and listen to a hypnosis sleep audio.

I’ve given you a lot of strategies here, but I want you to come away feeling empowered, not overwhelmed. You can make so many small daily decisions to improve your brain health. They are within your reach! Start with just a few and add from there.

Meanwhile, keep that key question in mind as you go through each day: Is this good for my brain, or bad for it? Choosing what’s good for your brain is the way to feel better fast.

THREE KEY BRAIN HEALTH STRATEGIES

  1. Develop brain envy.
  2. Avoid anything that hurts your brain.
  3. Engage in regular brain-healthy habits to create a strong foundation for success. For now, pick one new BRIGHT MINDS habit a week to plant into your life.

Never forget:

The health of your brain is foundational to feeling better fast —now and later. Love and take care of your brain, so you can love your life.

TINY HABITS THAT CAN HELP YOU FEEL BETTER FAST—AND LEAD TO BIG CHANGES

30 seconds to 20 minutes.

Each of these habits takes just a few minutes. They are anchored to something you do (or think or feel) so that they are more likely to become automatic. Once you do the behaviors you want, find a way to make yourself feel good about them—draw a happy face, pump your fist, or do whatever feels natural. Emotion helps the brain to remember.

  1. When I have used the bathroom, I will drink a glass of water (blood flow).
  2. After I hang up my car keys, I will learn a new chord on my instrument (retirement/new learning).
  3. When I finish brushing my teeth before bed, I will floss (inflammation).
  4. After I open the refrigerator, I will grab a handful of organic blueberries (genetics).
  5. When I go downstairs, I will hold the handrail (head trauma).
  6. When I pump gas, I will stand away from the nozzle so I don’t breathe fumes (toxins).
  7. When I am feeling sad, I will take a walk in nature (mental health).
  8. When I prepare vegetables for dinner, I will add garlic and onions to the mix (immunity).
  9. When I go to the salad bar, I will get a half cup of beans (neurohormones).
  10. When I eat dinner, I will add one colorful vegetable to my plate (diabesity).
  11. After I get into bed, I will listen to a hypnosis sleep audio (sleep).
Diagram titled 'Feel better fast. Which strategies will you choose?' A man and woman are inside a central circle of arrows demonstrating a cycle. The circle is labeled 'Problem (e.g., negativity, sadness, anxiety, anger, stress, and trauma).' The left half of the diagram is labeled 'Now but not later strategies.' It shows the man looking unhappy inside another circular cycle. The circle is labeled 'Short-term help, long-term problems.' Examples are listed under the circle: '(e.g., caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, processed foods, anger, gadgets, self-medication, marijuana, unhealthy choices).' The right half of the diagram is labeled 'Now and later strategies.' It shows the woman looking happy inside another circular cycle. The circle is labeled 'Long-term peace and happiness.' Examples are listed under the circle: '(e.g., new learning, music, meditation, hypnosis, hand warming, omega-3s, hydration, colorful fruits and veggies).'